decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Where The Free Software Movement Went Wrong (And How To Fix It) | 355 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Where The Free Software Movement Went Wrong (And How To Fix It)
Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Sunday, April 07 2013 @ 05:54 PM EDT
I don't trust anybody trying to "fix" it. Especially if they are not
of the founding crowd.

Good thing its crowdsourced (i.e. free and open) by definition, so the community
will pretty much end up using what definition works for them.

Subversion is gonna be tough.

Not saying that's what the author is doing.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Where The Free Software Movement Went Wrong
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 07 2013 @ 06:25 PM EDT
> The majority of developers still prefer it

Ay, there's the rub. Free software is too often "sold" as a magic
bullet for users. But those users who don't have some developer savvy
will find it less satisfying to actually use than their existing closed apps.
There's a whole army of users who don't have the intellect of a
Stallman or a Torvalds. Does Free software need to work for them?
If the answer is yes, then it may be necessary to pay somebody to
polish away the rough edges. Red hat, Canonical and a few smaller
distros are doing this, but then they get criticised for straying
down the path towards Redmond or Cupertino. The article
seemed worried about a no-win situation here ...

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Don't Bash, embrace..
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 07 2013 @ 07:38 PM EDT
Dispite the harsh comments that reflect on the controversial title, I don't
think the article was intended to bash the FOSS.
In fact the writer admits as suchs in one of the commets later down the line:
" klintron 5pts1 day ago @RobsNed I agree that those fundamental freedoms
are important, but ...To be clear: I don't want to throw out the original FSM
freedoms, only expand them and talk about them in a way that matters to people
who aren't developers."

So basically, I get the idea that the author was trying to do a 'Groklaw for
marketing', but without PJs experience or dedication.
Of course, to us most of those 'other' benefits of FOSS are old and well-known,
but the idea behind it has merit.

But if you can't promote/sell yourself, it wont matted how much code you give
back to the community because you'll be out of business.

So can we crowdsource marketing research? Multiple articles towards user habits
and GUI design have been linked here over the years, but are there concentrated
effords to collect them elseware?

- What marketng concepts are available?
- What are the most convincing ' benefits' of FOSS within certain user
categories/product groups?
- Which companies are using thme effective? Which companies are 'FUD'. (Which
cross teh balance between open code and open privacy leaks? Do all SAAS really
give back to the community?)

For instance, my sister accidently works for a small company using and
sponsoring on a FOSS event, and managed to name 5 big marketing failures in as
many minutes.

MBB

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )