Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1998 09:55:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Nicole Harrington <freelist@webweaver.net> To: "Jan B. Koum" <jkb@best.com> Cc: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>, Josef Grosch <jgrosch@superior.mooseriver.com>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Subject: Re: Advocates, speak up! Any place you can! Message-ID: <XFMail.980704095502.freelist@webweaver.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980704003034.27195A-100000@shell6.ba.best.com>
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On 04-Jul-98 Jan B. Koum wisely wrote:
<SNIP>
>
> I think my point got lost along the way here. We are making a case
> to business people. People who wear suites. People who don't know what boot
> sector is. They dont' know and dont' care what freebsd.org is or cdrom.com
> is. They want examples where people made a lot of money using FreeBSD. I
> think everything I list would qualify. Out of what you listed I think only
> mediacity and moviedatabase qualify. Thanks. But do remember, we need
> examples of people making BIG money with FreeBSD. Not simply running BIG
> servers. We are not making our case to techies - we are making our case to
> suit wearing public.
>
> -- Yan
>
The reason FreeBSD is not so well known is because it is believed, somewhat
rightly so, as not having a cool well known name. It is believed to appeal only
to techies.
If my company put out a Press Release stating that we where using FreeBSD,
what percentage of the population would understand it? Most people also don't
really know what Linux or Sun is, but they have heard the name, and that is
often enough for them. They may then resort to dissecting the name and saying, "
they are using a Free Operating thingy, must be a cash starved or a cheap
company. On a side note, the coolest name I have ever heard for an OS/Kernel is
the Mach4 Kernel, people don't have to understand it, it just sounds cool.
Hell lets face it, right now I would bet more people have heard of Linux than
BSDI and Free/Net/OpenBSD. We don't have the PR engine that they do. They have
thousands of members of the Linux Sheehad who's duty it is to share the word
about Linux. Not to mention the companies selling the stuff, like Caldera, who
need to advertise. Then of course the PR engines of the $$ Os's.
I believe collecting a list of Names is "A Good Thing"(tm) however it is what
we do with them that is important! We need to get companies to work with us on
this.
A few suggestions:
1) Offering a adversing co-op deal. Every time they advertise using the FreeBSD
name they get some money. also the big deal these days seems to be to "partner"
with someone. How could they and what would they get for "Partnering" with
FreeBSD? (think like a suit now..)
2) Advertising in well known Mags. Many of us are irritated at
performance computing magazine for going so NT. But imagine an ad in it to the
tone of, what ever it can do, we can do it better!
3) Overall, do more Guerilla advertising. Which means taking advantage of every
Free advertising venue possible. BSDI advertises and is still largely unknown
becouse they Only seem to target Techie Venues. While this is a good core start.
You need to put the name under the noses of the comman people to
reach the suits.
4) Just as we have the core development team, we need a core marketing team.
Just my .02
Nicole
nicole@webweaver.net - http://www.webweaver.net/
webmistress@dangermouse.org - http://www.dangermouse.org/
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