[Discuss] What to do about bad press

We got two pessimistic articles among about 10, neither of which are on
heavily-trafficked sites or are by correspondents much trusted in our
industry. PR people would refer to them as "outliers". Obviously, I could
write something in response. At this point I think this email to a public
list will be enough. People can pick it up and republish it, or not.

Brock and others have pointed out that the articles sound very much like
those printed about GNU/Linux in 1999. Many commentators then said that we
could never make a dent in the market, and they gave the same reasons. IBM,
HP, and Computer Associates jumped on our systems when they could see where
their own customers were going, and not before. We did not play golf with
their executives in order to get their support. We concentrated on making a
great system, and let their customers do the selling.

We will not be inviting HP, IBM, Computer Associates, and proprietary
application manufacturers to the party for some time. It would be silly to
invite them today. Once we have a release, have built up our own enterprise
user community (which we can do fine without IBM and co.), and have our
support mechanisms functioning well, we will be able to command the respect
necessary to build partnerships. This project will earn that respect with
reality, not market itself upon promises and vapors.

It happens that HP is investing a good deal into maintaining Debian as an
alternative, for sound business reasons of their own. And remember that
HP's Linux CTO is an SPI board member and Debian developer. HP is going our
way anyway.

Branding is useful, but there's nothing we could say simply with a brand
that would tell the story that we are not forming a new distribution, but
are building the enterprise applicability of the world's #2 Linux
distribution (before Debian people get offended, yes, it's #1 by many
measures). We will make that even more clear the next time we talk to press.

One of the reasons for the success of GNU/Linux is that it does not have to
rest upon marketing as much as other products do. Everything about us is
out in the open for potential customers to examine, to a degree
unprecedented in the proprietary software world. So, I would urge all of
you to concentrate on substance rather than sizzle. If you want big
companies to accept our system, start by helping the small companies that
are ready to accept it today. Build them into a visible and successful
community of users, and the rest will follow.

    Thanks

    Bruce
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