Promoting Linux as a tool for a participative community
vadania
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Saturday 05 January 2008
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I think it is wrong to promote GNU/Linux or any free software project only by its features. To be sold, any product needs to have a unique set of “selling points”. Even if GNU/Linux has the unique features U, V, Z , no other OS has, this is not a strong selling point for it, because:
- new comers are not used to these new features, they do not use them, so they do not actually exist for them; instead they will remark that it does not has features X, Y, with which they are very accustomed from their previous OS
- at any moment a proprietary OS can copy some of these ideas (no patents, right?), and then it won't be so unique.
We need something to differentiate us from the rest of the software products crowd.
The major selling point about Linux, about which too few people talk about, is that Linux is a philosophy, a lifestyle, a platform on which everybody can develop. Our marketing message should invite people to participate to Free Society. Imagine that your Linux message reaches a housewife halfway across the globe. The moment your ad finishes she should know that using Linux helps her to improve her cooking receipts: she can submit her receipts to a cooking receipts wiki, and then she should expect feedback from other readers. Show them how using Linux for sharing their work makes them more efficient.
Inspire yourself from what others write about Linux. Tim O'Reilly published the best description for Linux (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/articles/architecture_of_par...): “any system designed around communications protocols is designed for participation”. Imagine a logo containing that: “Linux, designed for participation”! Priceless!
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