[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

[Hoyt Duff]

Choosing a target market is more than making a listing of your
competitors' markets and combining some words to create a
unique-sounding market. And it's more that guessing that some
as-yet-unidentified market can be grepped from the imagination. For
Mageia, it's an expression of leadership. It won't be found in a mail
list survey or a popularity poll; it will be found in the Mageia
leadership.

There are many, many Linux distros in existence. Each has its own take
on kernel patches, packaging managers, desktops, multimedia,
programming languages, management tools, color schemes and  so on.
These things are superficial since once installed, every Linux distro
is doing essentially the same thing.

The choice of those little pieces and their development is what
excites and motivates the people that put together the distro

The effectiveness of all these pieces is what excites and motivates
the user of the distro.

Meeting the needs of the end user determines if the distro will be
popular or not.

But it's picking the correct end user to target that determines the
ultimate success of the distro.

Mandriva never figured out who its end user was or what its market was
and as a result tried to be everything to everybody and failed, not
because it was a bad distro (it remains one of the best), but because
it never had focus, it never knew its market.

One of the most important things that the Mageia leadership needs to
determine is the focus, the goal, the entire point of the existence of
Mageia. The leadership needs to decide.

They need to do it because they need the investment in order to be
motivated to lead, manage and build the distro.

They need to do it because it demonstrates that they are capable of
leading us and are worth investing in.

They need to do it because it needs to be done now.

-- 
Hoyt