Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 20:30:44 -0400 From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> To: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Brian Behlendorf <brian@hyperreal.org>, Don Wilde <dwilde1@ibm.net>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: branding Message-ID: <19980730203044.B17137@snark.thyrsus.com> In-Reply-To: <v0401170bb1e6ab0959b7@[128.113.24.47]>; from Garance A Drosihn on Thu, Jul 30, 1998 at 07:39:23PM -0400 References: <19313.901821898@time.cdrom.com>; <19980730113906.C16515@snark.thyrsus.com> <19313.901821898@time.cdrom.com> <19980730145939.A16709@snark.thyrsus.com> <v0401170bb1e6ab0959b7@[128.113.24.47]>
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Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>: > I admit I do find > it odd that the site makes so little mention of Walnut Creek as a > place *running* FreeBSD to get it's business done. Your info on it > just says that it "sells CD-ROMs featuring Linux and FreeBSD", but > for all your web pages say, the *business* might be run off IBM > Mainframes running MVS. You raise an interesting point that hadn't occurred to me before, and I thank you. If you'd like to suggest an amendment to the Walnut Creek language on cases.html that makes this point in a concise and forceful way, I'll take it. > In any case, that wasn't the main point I wanted to make. Every > message I've seen from you in this thread makes me think "This is > a guy who has his fixed vision for his web site". This is fine, but > it is quite different than "This is a guy who is interested in the > success of open source software". This tells me that you're missing a lot of context, and don't understand how the Open Source pages fit into the overall strategy I've been pursuing ever since the Netscape announcement. Since January I've been pursuing several parallel tracks. All are aimed at changing the basic assumptions of the software industry and software consumers so that open, peer-reviewed sources become the norm rather than the exception. 1. Further develop the theoretical arguments I made in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" for the superiority of open-source development and the *necessity* of going to it if we want decent reliability. 2. Make personal contact with leading decision-makers in business and government and pitch them directly for the concept. 3. Wage a PR campaign to turn the press around so that, rather than being contemptuous and hostile to "free software", they're interested in and supportive of "open source". 4. Educate the hacker community about what it takes to sell this concept -- how to speak language that stirs interest rather than hostility in J. Random Suit. 5. Appeal to businesspeoples' self-interested desire to make money by persuading them that open source is a better economic deal than closed. The Open Source website pushes all of these to some extent, but it's primarily focused on objective 5. One of the most important rules for effective propaganda is *stay on your message* (this is also why all the magazine interviews I give sound a lot alike). For good propaganda, dedicate any given presentation to one or two simple ideas that you hammer home repeatedly and as thoroughly as you can, as opposed to diffusing your energy through a complex presentation. Now...in each of those five channels, the set of "simple ideas" I'm pushing is slightly different, tuned for different audiences. Taken all together they add up to a comprehensive case for open source, but if you're only sampling one channel you'll probably see what looks like a "fixed vision". (Don't take my word for this. Go browse "Homesteading the Noosphere" and compare it to the Open Source website. Then read my InfoWorld or TechWeb interviews.) So it's true I have a "fixed vision" for the website. The Open Source site's idea is "you can make more money using open source". If I tried doing other things there (like a lot of up-front stuff about nonprofits) I would risk falling off message and losing effectiveness with the target sudience. But you shouldn't confuse this with the *whole* message of the campaign. -- <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a> What if you were an idiot, and what if you were a member of Congress? But I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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