On 07.05.2015 10:23, Richard Brown wrote: Hey,
The problem with this theory is that it just isn't backed up by reality.
We have spent over 9 years targeting "Everyone, Everywhere"
We do go to more events than we ever have before, with more materials, and much higher quality materials
Not sure where you take the "9 years" from, but openSUSE comes from a "linux for everyone and everywhere" approach, as that was the position SUSE Linux was owning back in the days. We came from there, and once Ubuntu was pulling away so many pure users, we had to try to refocus on "what can we do now if Ubuntu is more attractive to normal users?", which lead to this experienced users/developers idea. I know that marketing always works like "identify a market, and act on that" - but I think in our case of openSUSE that is wrong. We should more be proud of what we can and have, and present that openly and self confidently. We have a lot, and that will attract a lot of people such users, developers, bee keepers, automobile racers, etc if we tell them. We want all of them, there is no need to "preselect" on devs. Now people will say, "But you need focus", yes, and the focus of openSUSE for me always was clearly: - transparency and an open collaboration model between company and community - a strong free software focus - technical excellence in quality and system design - opportunity and room to realize "your idea" with rich free infrastructure - a nice welcoming community We do very well in (almost) each of the points. But we fail to present that. Nice "material" does not really tell people that. Enthusiastic community does.
And sure, in terms of end users, this strategy has brought in more users than ever before, the statistics shown at oSC 13 showed that we were growing well 2 years ago, and more recently 13.2's Download numbers show that the trend has continued, and probably accelerated. Hm, statistics... I am afraid that is self cheating. As somebody who has to provide packages for for all kinds of distributions of a popular software, I have to say that I get more question and remarks even about CentOS6 (as desktop system!) than about openSUSE. Really, I am sorry to see and say that, as I also spent a lot into openSUSE, but it's a fact. A completely not logic fact, because openSUSE is of course *way* better than many of the other popular Linuxes out there.
I am happy that this kind of discussion comes up again. All that can improve if we just do some work, and there is another thread already identifying why that is blocked here and there. Cool, lets get that more fluid again. regards, Klaas
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org