[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

[Wolfgang Bornath]

Reading all this one thing comes to my mind: the world is not the same
all over the world. Same applies to your assessments of school
decisions, families and the Linux/WIndows issue.

Over here the public office of a state controlls what computers and
operating systems are used in schools, money is not a criteria there.
It is, of course, in the sense that many schools can not have
computers at all or just 10 machines for a school of 500 students. Ah,
yes, I'm talking about Germany, not somewhere in central Africa.
The public office makes deals with Microsoft (sometimes Mr. Gates
himself came to visit before a new contract was signed), the largest
local t-com provider sponsors the internet access and the schools have
no say in that.

The families: if the kid wants a computer then either Dad buys a new
one and the kids get the old, or they buy a new one but mom has no
say, it's either Dad or the kids because the parents don't know
anything about computers.

One of the largest and fastest growing groups of computer users over
here are people of age, retired persons who visit computer courses in
the neighborhood center (I'm teaching there sometimes). They are a
target group also.

I think the one you picked (young couples with kids) are those who are
the unlikeliest targets - Mom and Dad are working, perhaps with
computers, most times with Windows. Kids will learn their computer
knowledge in school, not at home because Mom and Dad have no time for
that.

See, this is quite different to the picture you are painting, and I
can imagine that it may be still different in other areas of the
world.

Therefore picking one target group for a worldwide project like this
is the wrong way IMHO.

wobo