[Mageia-discuss] Mageia logo proposals and selection

Graham Lauder yorick_ at openoffice.org
Mon Oct 18 02:20:07 CEST 2010


On Sunday 17 Oct 2010 21:20:48 Renaud MICHEL wrote:
> On dimanche 17 octobre 2010 at 03:11, LinuxBSDos.com wrote :
> > It's this idea of "community" that has been the bane of virtually all
> > Linux distributions. It's part of the reason that we have failed to
> > conquer the desktop. If Android were a "community" mobile distribution,
> > it would not be in the position that it currently occupies.
> > 
> > Instead of focusing on the needs of the community, why not start thinking
> > of building a distribution for main stream users. Think about how
> > successful companies design their products. Think about what has made
> > Apple so successful. It's vision and foresight. It's knowing what people
> > need and building it, before they even realize that they need it.
> > 
> > The whole idea of listening to thousands of opinions on how a
> > distribution should be designed stymies real progress, especially when
> > most of those opinions are not based on a real understanding of the
> > subject matter.
> > 
> > You get a group of people who have a certain degree of expertize in their
> > field, and get them to design and build a product. In this particular
> > case it should be very easy. Just look around. There are hundreds of
> > distributions that we can co-opt features from and then make them better.
> 
> Contrary to android and macos (and mandriva) which are backed by
> enterprises, mageia is a community project.
> So if you throw away the community, there is nothing left.

No one is advocating throwing away the community, but being part of a 
community has it's issues, decision making speed is one of them. In a 
corporate environment people are hired to do a particular job, they are hired 
for their expertise in their field and they, for that reason, have the major 
in any policy in their particular area of responsibility.  However in a 
Community based OSS project everybody has the opportunity to have their say 
and that can lead to conflict, god knows I sometimes just shout at the screen: 
"JUST LET ME DO MY JOB, I HAPPEN TO BE GOOD AT IT!!"  and yea I can be a bit 
forceful at times. :D

However, it is healthy and it's a strength that Corporates don't have.  
Anybody who's been on big development projects will be able to rant long and 
Loud about those F**** marketing guys keep changing the spec and we're going 
way over budget and I'm going to...[insert mutilation of choice]..to those 
a@%*holes.

Well this Marketing/Training guy, often says the same thing about Project 
Managers. :/  A good project manager is gift from the gods, because he has a 
wide open communication track with HR and Marketing because he realises that  
Users aren't developers, and the gets market research and User experience 
surveys done before the project starts.  All too rare sometimes I think.  An 
RFP or spec often gets written with no consideration other than scratching the 
Writers itch and the problems start.  However that's another treatise 
entirely! :)

The point is that sometimes it's better to step back and say "OK, this isn't 
my field, let the guys whose field it is get on with it."  Let me stress 
however the sometimes and definitely not always. 

Now in the Mageia Marketing group we have Teachers with deep pedagogical 
knowledge, we have Marketers and Communications people who are bloody good at 
what they do, who have been involved in marketing FOSS projects for years 
right up to and including a PHD in FOSS marketing.  I hold it up as a huge 
privilege to work with this group of excellent people, and guess what, we are 
a community, a community with a shared goal, to market Mageia in the best way 
we know how.

I look to the Founders, I look at our Marketing team and I look at the wider 
contributing community and I seriously believe that if Redmond isn't quaking 
in it's boots it should be.

Cheers 
GL


-- 
Graham Lauder,
OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ
http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html

OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant.

INGOTs Assessor Trainer
(International Grades in Open Technologies)
www.theingots.org


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