Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 20:43:40 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jkh@zippy.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: Dave@Yost.com, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: bsd vs. linux and NT chart Message-ID: <199903072043.NAA27148@usr04.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <57399.920834139@zippy.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Mar 7, 99 11:15:39 am
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Two comments on this thread so far:
| This exchange could go on, with Marketing insisting that engineering
| excise absolutely every bit of code that isn't needed for the install
| so it can still fit, but then Engineering might say, sure we could do
| that, but it will cost you X person-months, and Marketing might say
| they have something more important for you to work on. because
| installation is only a tiny part of the whole experience.
First, if someone can't install your code, it doesn't matter what
you do to the rest of the "experience", they're not going to see
any of it.
] As to marketing, I think "marketing" (or, to look at it from a
] slightly different angle, "being marketable") has always been a
] hallmark of FreeBSD when compared to the others and should by no means
] be considered a dirty word.
Second, you can make a product as salable/marketable as possible,
and you still won't be able to move very many units if the product
is not buyable. Being sales focussed is bad.
For example, a really trivial thing that could be done that would
make people hundreds of times more likely to try FreeBSD is to allow
it to install in a subdirectory of a Windows 95/98 file system, such
there was no "commit-before-trying" requirement. This would require
either a native UMSDOS VFS layer, or finally fixing the stacking, so
that you could get UNIX attributes on the files via a stacking layer.
You could go this one better than that, and actually place an ICON
on the desktop, as part of the install process, that caused the
machine to reboot in FreeBSD. You could go two better by placing an
AUTORUN.INI on the FreeBSD CDROM that offered to do the install into
a subdirectory for you ("Install FreeBSD Test Drive?").
> That marketing person (with enough technical clue to understand this
> unique market niche) is still out there, somewhere, and hopefully
> we'll find him or her soon. Until then, we can at least do what we
> can with the folks on this list, many of whom do have some facility
> with marketing even though it may not be their strong suit.
FreeBSD is still in the innovator/early adopter phase of the
technology adoption life cycle, and it's looking straight into the
maw of the chasm (re: Geoffrey Moore, "Crossing the Chasm").
FreeBSD needs to start concentrating on being a whole product, and
on segmenting its market. Right now, it's not a whole product,
with the exception of its productization by a number of embedded
systems companies, and there is no market segment where it is the
"must have" soloution.
What is FreeBSD? Unless you can answer the quetion in one paragraph
small enough to state in a ride in an elevator where your audience
is captive, you will never make the mainstream.
Let's do the Geoofrey Moore "Define the Battle" exercise for a
potentially hot FreeBSD market, the DSL NAT that installs and runs
without damaging an existing Windows 95/98 installation. Here's
the form:
o For (target customer)
o Who (statement of the need or opportunity)
o The (product name) is a (product category)
o That (statement of key benefit - that is, compelling reason to buy)
o Unlike (primary competitive alternative: be honest)
o Our product (statement of primary differentiation)
Here's the statement:
For home and small business DSL subscribers who are looking for a
cheap way to share a DSL connection between two or more computers
the FreeBSD OS is a DSL Network Address Translation product that
can install on low end PC hardare that you might already have lying
around. Unlike the Linux OS alternative, our product doesn't
require removing Windows 95, repartitioning the hard drive, or
complicated procedures in an environment unfamiliar to the end user.
You want market share? Then segment the market by use model, and
build whole products, not things that have to be hacked to function.
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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