Marketing

Marketing

A few things I didn't see addressed in the UserLinux white paper first draft that I believe would be valuable assets are Marketing and User Relations.

Marketing:
Marketing needs a small budget, enough to put out proper press releases to the world through wire services. Marketing needs to keep awareness on UserLinux (or whatever the final name ends up being), and create exposure in the media. The marketing arm should encourage a sharp looking web site for "regular users", and encourage a brand consistent image for UserLinux. A strong, practical logo and accompaninying style guidelines would go a long ways.

Marketing shouldn't be necessary, especially considering the price (free) of UserLinux but unfortunately free or not it has to compete with other soulutions and marketing would be very beneficial. As GNU/Linux systems start to migrate to less technical users, more mainstream exposure will encourage use. I know from experience it is much easier to propose use of a free software project to management if they have already heard of it.

Marketing shouldn't control UserLinux, in fact I believe a large asset to GNU/Linux in general is that the systems are not marketing driven. Marketing should impact awareness and usage, not the distribution directly.

User Relations:
It would be nice to have an online suggestion box for less technical users. The common viewpoint of "It's open source, if you see a feature you want is missing, contribute it back" won't scale so readily to less technical users. It would be great to have areas for constructive feedback for less technical users to access.
 

All in all I find the UserLinux concept very encouraging. I like the fact 'enterprise' concerns are being addressed from the beginning. It would be nice to see marketing be a priority because, like it or not, marketing will greatly encourage adoption.

I think Bruce Perens has a great idea here, and I hope to see it grow into reality.