Date: Sat, 07 Aug 1999 00:31:49 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: brian@pobox.com Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Marketing FreeBSD / FreeBSD as a pr Message-ID: <4605.934011109@localhost> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 06 Aug 1999 22:54:08 PDT." <19990807055408.22509.rocketmail@web1005.mail.yahoo.com>
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> a) If helping people help you is such a burden, have some of > these people you've helped along help the next people. Those people should always feel free to step forward, but please also bear in mind the fact that we seem to get flack when core *doesn't* respond to things like this personally and so it's really a lose-lose situation with that particular solution. I imagine this particular member of core could stand to be a little more generous in his own assumptions when responding to such things, however. > b) You never ASKED for my qualifications. Instead you assumed I > was a yutz and began making personal attacks. I never assumed or said that you were a yutz any more than I assumed or said that you were a rocket scientist, and I think we're somewhat in disagreement when it comes to defining a "personal attack" as well. To my way of thinking, a personal attack would have been to state outright that your parentage was suspect or that your entire existence was a waste of perfectly good organic molecules or anything else not dealing with the points you raised and instead shifting entirely to you, the person. Perhaps some of the analogies I drew were harshly drawn, but at all times what I've sought to "attack" have been your IDEAS and/or the manner in which you chose to present them, not you, Mr. Brian McGroarty, as a person. To state this further, if I can not be in vehement disagreement with you over some set of issues without you taking that disagreement as a personal attack then we're truly in trouble as far as our future communications go, and far more trouble than any that might be caused by my "inability to deal with people" or a lack of "civility." I put those words in quotes because these are also mailing lists with a lot of engineers on them and engineers are not known or even particularly valued for their subtlety - if they think your code or your ideas suck, they'll say so and be done with it, nothing personal and all that. I didn't like the way you raised some of your points, I didn't like the fact that you were rehashing old recycled topics without adding anything particularly new that I could see (at least from my perspective at the moment), I particularly didn't like the attack on the imagery (rescinded or not) since I personally regard that whole debate as a truly singular waste of time and energy, but that still has NOTHING to do with how I feel about you personally and if I met you next week at some conference, I'd be the first to buy you a beer, shoot you a grin and say "So, how are those articles you're writing coming along, Brian?", just as I'd do with someone I'd just finished having some mutual love-fest with in another mailing list. I don't take strong disagreement with my points of view personally and you honestly shouldn't either, especially when it comes to disagreements expressed via email since you can't read my facial expressions or hear my tone of voice and the same holds true for any emails you send. > I've participated in the production of nearly 20 software > products for companies such as Microsoft, Midway, Interplay, > Atari and Lego Media and have had involvement in marketing and > production work for the Chicago Bulls, High Voltage Software, > GNB Battery and numerous smaller clients. Well, now that's a very impressive resume' and certainly one which helps to differentiate you from the more run-of-the-mill advocates who suggest publically or privately everything from FreeBSD condoms (smooth or ribbed I dunno, they usually don't go into detail) to latex daemon-suits with horns, modelled in our catalog by none other than Michelle Pfeiffer herself, of course. All fine(?) ideas in their own right but not very practical when stacked against all the other promotional items we could be spending money on and, hopefully, making enough back on to not go broke in the process. In any case, given that you now know where some of the hot-buttons for us are (the daemon stays, etc.), what would you suggest as the next retail packaging improvement, understanding also, of course, the fact that we have a limited range of product to offer and can only package it in so many ways? In terms of CD products there's the 6 CD FreeBSD toolkit, the 4 CD base product and the occasional developer's 2 CD snapshot. In terms of "other" items, we have FreeBSD stickers, case plate icons, T-shirts in various sizes and colors, polo shirts, denim jackets, baseball caps, mousepads (new), stainless steel "starbucks style" coffee mugs (new), stuffed daemon plushes (various sizes), and one FreeBSD book. Not all of these items are practical for most channel partners, of course, I list them merely for completeness's sake. The only "bundle" we currently offer is the book+base product+toolkit, known as the "FreeBSD Power Pak" (I'm not in love with that name but have no truly better suggestions to offer the sales department so I can't really complain, either), the rough appearance of which can be seen at http://www.freebsdmall.com/software/#bsdpak (though the box is somewhat more substantial than its image indicates). Long planned but not yet done is some sort of "desktop pro" bundle with Applixware for FreeBSD (done) and at least one other thing to round it out. Some desktop product which just hasn't been ported or written yet, perhaps, or a book on using FreeBSD especially on the desktop, listing what sorts of applications to get and whatever other nifty bits of information might be germin to the desktop user, that would complete the bundle for us. Even more nebulous is the "Server pro" bundle, one of the original components being an SSL capable web server which has now been somewhat overshadowed by its freeware counterparts and making it less desirable as a cost item. That leaves us with a very empty plate for the Server Pro bundle at the moment. :) We're also not total yutzs ourselves, it should be pointed out, and we're now into retail channels like Ingram and CompUSA, with plans to expand much more aggressively into Japan and China than we have previously (not to mention Europe). While I can't disclose actual sales figures, I can say that the graph is still climbing nicely and there have been quite a few PowerPak sitings at major chain stores now that we finally got into the large channels. Perhaps we can reap the benefits of being a fairly unique product amongst the sea of Linux products one typically finds there, and perhaps with the aid of your WELCOME ideas in the areas of packaging, imagerly and advertising we can do even better. You've gotten my attention and I'm all ears, the sincerity of that statement hopefully born out by the level of detail I've taken pains to include in this message. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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