Re: Marketing (Was: Re: New developers and publicity)

[Alex Perez]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Nicolas Roard wrote:

> 
> Le 28 sept. 04, à 04:37, Banlu Kemiyatorn a écrit :
> 
> > On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 15:22:08 -0600, Adam Fedor <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> >> What I'm more afraid of is that people will be interested in this, but
> >> nothing will get done.  That's happened more than once in the past.
> >>
> >> So feel free to start this. I certainly hope we can accomplish
> >> something.
> >
> > In my opinion. I think marketting GNUstep is a waste because it is not 
> > a desktop
> > environment.
> 
> I disagree -- whatever the project, marketing, word of mouth, is 
> important. But..

I also disagree with Banlu on this point, and agree with Nicolas

> 
> > End-users make a system self-sustainable since technically they
> > paid (in a way) developers to live. It's better to put marketting
> > effort into a desktop
> > environment, eg. backbone and etoile.
> 
> ... effectively, marketing a desktop will be easier for GNUstep, as so 
> many people already mix the libraries with the potential GNUstep 
> desktop.
> Which is absolutely normal, considering what currently GNUstep propose 
> : we claim it's not a desktop and it's just a "development 
> environment",
> yet the applications you could create with it are absolutely not 
> integrated with any host environment, have a completely different 
> look'n feel.
> It's thus logical that people think GNUstep is itself an 
> environment/desktop. Plus, the GNUstep libraries provides more or less 
> all a desktop
> needs, and thus GNUstep apps are automatically "integrated" and can 
> easily communicate together or share data (pasteboard, services, 
> defaults, DO..).
> And effectively, a GNUstep "desktop" is more or less just a collection 
> of apps.
> To confuse things a bit more, the GNUstep project now hosts GWorkspace, 
> which provides the closest thing to a "GNUstep desktop/env" for an 
> end-user.
> 
> To sum up: there is a lot of confusion about what GNUstep is as a 
> project, but it's quite comprehensible.

Agreed. It is not a desktop environment, but because it provides more than 
most toolkits do, it is often misunderstood. GWorkspace does indeed 
complicate matters further.

> 
> And this confusion doesn't help us to attract people.
Certainly not.

> 
> Marketing for the GNUstep project should at least be an effort to 
> gather the *existing* marketing resources in one place:
> have a web page listing GNUstep arts (icons, wallpapers, etc.), 
> documentation, marketing docs, articles, tutorials, etc.
> Regardless what GNUstep is supposed to be, all that information already 
> exist and should be centralized.
> And of course, we should have some marketing mailing-list.

A marketing section at GNUstep.org would go a long way to alleviating this 
situation. This is part of my plan, but there's more to this than one man 
can do. When I approached Stefan Urbanek earelier this year, and asked him 
if I could move the StepTalk website to GNustep.org, I had this 
cohesiveness in mind. Stefan was very receptive to the idea. 
Unfortunately, Nicola Pero was not. His disgustingly outdated website 
still remains at http://www.gnustep.it/jigs/ . JIGS is in need of a 
permanent maintainer, which is another issue which needs resolution. I 
have recently found a RIGS maintainer.

> Basically, it would be a marketing spin, as GNUstep itself will 
> continue to be about the frameworks, but at least it will be much 
> clearer.
...and GWorkspace, and Gorm, and GDL2, and GSWeb, and ProjectCenter, 
and...all the other stuff in CVS..
> 
> The "GNUstep Desktop" part could just then handles the "desktop parts" 
> of GNUstep. It could be a list of requirements to have cooperating 
> desktops
> (so an user could switch GNUstep desktops without losing anything), it 
> could have some apps (GWorkspace..) for a local GNUstep Desktop, and
> it could, hopefully, be used to implement Alexm's idea of "desktop 
> bundles" -- so you could have all the desktop-related GNUstep parts in 
> bundles,
> and have thus a nice "GNUstep/KDE", "GNUstep/GNOME", "GNUstep/Windows", 
> each encapsulating nicely the particularity of theses desktops
> (eg, dnd, theme, etc.) -- and thus GNUstep could really be marketed as 
> a development solution, independant of an ideal "GNUstep Desktop"...

True integration with the GNOME and KDE panel is needed before anyone in 
thos ecamps will take this seriously, but I agree with it in concept.

> 
> > However, it would be better (in a view)
> > for the desktop environments to share openness with end users as much
> > as possible.
> 
> What do you mean by that ? Agree on particular file formats/frameworks 
> ? (think of AdressBook framework..)
> 
Yes, I do not understand either...please clarify

> >
> > Now for the DE goal if people agree with the above idea.
> >
> > In short term, I think it is a good idea to have a desktop environment 
> > project
> > under GNU's umbrella. It is a quick way to have people to agree on 
> > something.
> > And I'm expecting Adam to start this (if he can agree with the idea)
> > to reduce any
> > possible social conflict.
> >
> > In long term, the GNU brand and politics could defer the project. In 
> > that case
> > some people can start doing something like GNOME did if they think 
> > GNU's
> > political view isn't as important.
> >
> > There will be no further opinion from me on this subject because I'm 
> > busy
> > building my own DE which is focusing DTP and I would like to dictate 
> > it. ;)
> 
> keep in mind I'm already involved in Backbone and a bit in Étoilé, so 
> I'm probably partial :-)
> 
> But I think, whenever is possible, we should work on a common desktop 
> project, as
> we aren't many developers -- fragmenting the workforce isn't helpful.

Agreed.
> 
> That said, it's normal that people have different goals...
> For example, Backbone aims to be a quite "classic" desktop while 
> Quentin's Étoilé wants
> to be more innovative (metadatas filemanager, etc.).

There is room for both.

> But what we could do, perhaps, is at least to have some approach 
> similar to FreeDesktop, but for
> us -- that is, share basic frameworks manipulating data, if not the 
> apps themselves.
> So an user could smoothly switch desktops without losing anything.

> For example, things like AddressBook, BookmarkKit, etc.
Exactly.