Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 22:31:10 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Frank Pawlak <fpawlak@execpc.com> Cc: danj@3skel.com, jmb@FreeBSD.ORG, toor@dyson.iquest.net, brett@lariat.org, mike@smith.net.au, dshanes@personalogic.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Promoting FreeBSD - the user's piece of the action. Message-ID: <12686.892272670@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 10 Apr 1998 18:53:04 CDT." <199804102353.SAA06404@darkstar.connect.com>
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[ Resubjected but left in -hackers with followup set since people seem to just NOT want to have this conversation in -chat and so be it; I shall not attempt to hold back the tide. :-) ] > 1) A marketing and business plan needs to be developed, objectives and > target markets clearly documented. FreeBSD strengths clearly delineated I'm all for it, but keep in mind the fact that without volunteer labor to make all these wonderful things actually HAPPEN, it'll be no more successful than any of our previous attempts at serious marketing. A lot of the usual voiced indignation and discussion but no actual press releases written, no articles in the magazines, no books, no public speaking engagements, in short - no significant action. Ask yourselves all for a moment just how you think that Linux's own PR machine got to be such a monster - is it Linus being an engaging speaker and spending 350 days out of the year on the road, pounding the pulpit? No. Linus isn't a bad speaker, in fact, but he's too busy taking care of his family to go on any road tours and it's not really due to his efforts that Linux is as successful as it is today anyway. Linux is wildly successful because it managed to attract, early on, a hoard of camp followers who didn't hack the sources but did hack text and produced reams of freely republishable text which bootstrapped an entire book industry. They published articles in magazines and wrote letters to the editor. THEY did the big PR push behind the operating system and, as far as I can see, the developers were left to do what they do best - develop software. I've seen a lot of good ideas in this thread, please don't get me wrong, but what I've also seen is a disturbing number of posts which essentially say "Rah rah! Yes! Get organized at the top and do a bunch of stuff and FreeBSD will win! Here's a list of things I think you guys should do ..." While I do appreciate the ideas, the above approach *seriously* misses the point, the point being that if you wait for the core team to aggressively market this OS then you're going to wait a long time and miss any number of valuable opportunities in the process. More to the point, you'll fail. I'm sorry, but it's an indisputable fact that the core team doesn't have any real marketing folks on it at the moment, nor do we know of any serious marketing folks who are genuinely willing and able to lead any one-man cavalry charges, so for the time being what FreeBSD's users all really REALLY need to do is to stop waiting for someone from the top to "tell them what to do" and just start doing it themselves! That's exactly what's been going on in the Linux camp all this time, by the way. People haven't been asking Linus Torvalds to put together a marketing plan for them before doing anything, they've just gone right on ahead and done whatever seemed obvious in the way of marketing/evangelism, and it's WORKING. I'm sorry for the use of caps, but this really is a serious problem. Our users have, by and large, COMPLETELY MISSED the entire concept of what marketing a free operating system is all about. Perhaps we've simply been too successful at acting like a corporate entity for folks to really make the connection that we're still free software and with all of free software's marketing problems - the fact that everyone's still waiting for a non-existent central marketing department to pop up and say "here's the new ad campaign!" sort of suggests this - but something is definitely wrong here. In any case, we don't have a central marketing department and demanding that we form one in order to solve this problem really does, again, completely miss the point. When you go to fight a war, you don't find 5-10 guys and say "guys, the enemy is attacking with 12 divisions of armored infantry - here are some rifles, go drive them off!" No, you raise 12 divisions of your own among the populace and it's the citizens who go off to fight the war on their own behalf. Free software is no different - if you want FreeBSD to win, you need to sit down and _invest the time_ in making tangible things happen, like writing magazine articles or any of the other activities I've mentioned so far. It is with you, the user, that the war will either be won or lost. I'm also sorry to make it sound like I'm picking on Frank, I'm not, I'm simply taking this response as an opportunity to make the point that people should really stop wasting time asking for instructions on what to do and simply start DOING something. You don't need instructions from me or anyone else on the core team on what to do, you really do know already! I've already listed dozens of good activities and most people know instinctively what constitutes good PR - writing books, magazine articles or press releases, giving CDs to libraries, presenting FreeBSD in schools, telling your friends - all the things we've covered so far. If you're at all typical, your biggest problem is, in fact, simply finding the time and volition to sit down and DO THE WORK. In this, I can only suggest simply blocking out some time and saying "OK, enough talk - this time I'm going to WRITE the friggin' thing!" (whatever your value for "thing" might be) or getting involved in some collaborative effort with a friend. Many books in print today were only completed because several people were involved and managed to keep one another on track - if one person had tried doing it alone, it'd never have happened. That's a good point to keep in mind as you contemplate your own private PR efforts. Last of all, please don't worry about "speaking inappropriately for FreeBSD" - just take the initiative! I've had more than one person contact me to say "I would have spoken about it at FooLISA but I didn't want to speak for you guys." Erm.. That's another case of seriously missing the point - FreeBSD belongs to all of you, we in core being merely its current custodians, and you need not fear that you'll be taking some sort of liberties by extolling the virtues of YOUR operating system! Somebody in -core might send you a nasty-gram if your arguments consist of nothing more than "Linux sucks! Run FreeBSD dammit!" but it's still your right to evangelise however you see fit, albeit hopefully with a modicum of style, and take up the fight on your own. Don't wait for us! As the Nike commercial says: Just Do It. :-) Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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