Hi All,
While I'm really pleased and encouraged to see such a passionate
discussion about Marketing openSUSE, including targeting very specific
areas of opportunity, I want to provide some food for thought which
hopefully sheds some light on my _personal opinion_ where we should be
expending our efforts
As this thread has started with Windows 10, lets spend a second
thinking about Microsoft's motivation for making Windows 10
Microsoft make Windows 10 to make money
More users means Microsoft get more money
So Microsoft's primary marketing audience is users, in order to get
more users, in order to make more money
Does it make sense for openSUSE to target that same primary audience?
I'd argue No
but it's nothing to do with Microsoft partnering with SUSE or even
Microsoft's recent and growing contributions to the Linux ecosystem in
general
It's a simple case of considering *openSUSE's* motivation for existing
openSUSE does not make openSUSE to make money
More consumer users does not mean more money
In fact, it can be argued that typical consumer users bring additional
'costs', requiring more infrastructure and help in order to support
them.
Should openSUSE's primary marketing audience be standard consumer users?
I'd believe the correct answer to that question is No
So why do we make openSUSE?
There's lots of reasons, we're a diverse community, but I would say
one over-arching theme that is true for the vast majority of us is "we
make openSUSE to make & use better technology"
Contributors developing to the openSUSE Project make openSUSE and
tools like OBS and openQA in an effort to make the best engineered
Linux distributions and tools in the world
Many users of openSUSE, be they sysadmins, developers, or power users
are often drawn to openSUSE because of our well engineered products,
but also because they want to build _their own_ projects upon the best
software, the best tools, and the best engineering.
This might be something as 'simple' as their personal workstation, or
a small raspberry Pi project, or as complicated as a geo-cluster
hosted in several datacenters around the world.
It doesn't matter about the scale of the use, I'd say that the reason
most people are drawn to openSUSE is that good engineering backbone
which forms the foundation of everything we do.
Sysadmins want the best engineered Linux to run their machines and
their administration terminals, with the tools to make their life as
easy as possible..
Developers want the best engineered Linux to run their dev machines,
test servers, and productiong systems, with the tools and the latest
development stacks provided as easily possible.
And there are many other people who are often categorised as 'Power
users' who overlap or aspire to be with those two other categories to
varying degrees, who want a powerful operating system, well engineered
and reliable, so they can get whatever their work is done.
All three of these groups are likely to be very passionate about what
they use, and are likely to share that with like-minded people they
meet and talk to.
All three of these groups are technically minded, and are therefore
more likely to be able and willing to contribute back to our open
source project than a standard consumer use who just wants something
that works, and has no deeper interest than that.
All three of these groups want both stable technologies they can rely
on, and the latest and greatest innovations so they can have an edge
to solve the problems they face in their own projects.
Embracing these realities and focusing the marketing of openSUSE
accordingly is the concept the Board calls "The Makers Choice"
openSUSE already builds openSUSE to provide the best Linux and tools
for themselves and anyone else who wants to build upon them.
We already have OBS, openQA and other tools, as well as Tumbleweed,
and soon we will have Leap, which all fit into a very strong narrative
around this theme.
More *contributors* mean we can build more, build better and find more
people to help is build even more, and build even better.
I strongly believe our primary audience should therefore be these
'Makers' - Developers, sysadmins, and power users.
People should want to use our open source technologies to build great
things, either for themselves or for everyone else.
We should focus our marketing on making it very obvious to these
people that we are the right choice for them, for all of the reasons I
outline above.
This audience contains people who are much more likely and easily
going to transition from just using openSUSE to using AND contributing
to openSUSE, and this will help us build and continue momentum going
forward.
And when we're doing this, building great things with what I've
described above us our *Primary* focus, I would expect that we'll be
well positioned to also appeal strongly to a *Secondary* audience of
consumer users, who may just want to use openSUSE because it's better
than everything else.
And that's fine, great, and I look forward to that day - but lets
spend the majority of our time and effort focusing where we get the
most benefit, which in my opinion really means embracing the concept
of 'The Makers Choice' and using it as a strong guide to direct our
marketing efforts for the next years.
Regards,
Richard
On 31 July 2015 at 16:26, Jay
Am Freitag, 31. Juli 2015, 14:06:43 schrieb Antoine Ginies:
Jay:
As Windows 10 is being launched, details emerge what comes along with it.
Just read (1).
You will have an opinion on that.
But as nightmarish as this may seem, it also opens a huge "Window" of opportunity for openSUSE and OpenSource in general.
What came to my mind here is a campaign to make potential users aware of major benefits of openSUSE / OpenSource:
- we don't spy on you - we don't sell your privacy - we don't handcuff you
Take that as a short sketch.
This could be a campaign just for openSUSE - like a banner on openSUSE.org - or one that is conducted by and coordinated between the major distros and perhaps other organizations.
Thoughts?
Microsoft is a partner in many project at SUSE (vmdp, UEFI etc...). So this is not a good idea to do that....
I understand.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not anti-business. Nor am I anti-Microsoft. I've been using their products since ages. And some of them were good.
But their new privacy-policy simply goes too far. For me, a red line has been crossed. And it was Microsoft's well-deliberated choice to do so.
In addition, I realise that the partnership with Microsoft prevents openSUSE to take advantage of a major opportunity to attract new users.
That's a pity for openSUSE. And a disappointment for any competitive marketer.
I really regret it - but under these circumstances it does not make sense for me to further participate in the openSUSE-project.
I hope I didn't hurt anybody's feelings in the discussions I took part in.
And I wish you guys and the openSUSE-project all the best! And I mean it.
Good-bye and kind regards!
Rainer Fiebig -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
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