SWOT - Comparative Analysis

[Robyn Bergeron]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Luke Slater <tinmachin3 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17 June 2010 17:45, Jan Wildeboer <jwildebo at redhat.com> wrote:
>> I do have a problem with painting other community distributions as
>> competition. Yes, we all care about usage etc, but I would never (and have
>> never) called it competition.
>>
>> Competition leads to market share discussions, which in case of freely
>> available community distributions is simply the wrong language to use.
>>
>> IMHO distributions don't "compete" in the typical market sense. It is more a
>> way of differentiation, focus and target audience.
>>
>> Once we compete, we will try to transport the notion of differentiation
>> which will not serve the goal of upstream focusing.
>>
>> This is why I personally do not like the Novell OOo edition - it is
>> perceived as a fork, which hurts all.
>>
>> I would prefer if we stop using the term competition.
>>
>> Yes, I know this could become a flamewar. I just wanted to point out one of
>> the core differences between commercial marketing and community marketing.
>> Let's not mix them too much.
>>
>> As always, I might be wrong.
>>
>> Jan
>
> We practice Open Marketing[1]. We are positive and instead of battling
> our fellow distributions we strive to serve our target audience well.
>
> [1] - http://opensource.com/business/10/5/open-marketing-what-does-it-really-mean
>

And a big +1 and round of applause to you folks for doing so.

Honestly, I look at our SWOT and what the openSUSE folks have done and
I see so many areas where we we could really synchronize efforts -
particularly when I look at things like market sizing and penetration,
talking about the wider OS ecosystem (Linux/$UNIX variants v. Apple v.
MS).  Areas where we all collectively benefit from consistent
marketing messaging.

I really think that - among the distros - we have tremendous
opportunities to all work together, while, of course, each retaining
our own individual features that differentiate the distros from one
another.  There's no reason that Open Marketing cannot work similarly
to the fashion that, say, the general development part of the Linux
community works - collectively at a higher level upstream to solve
problems and join efforts in some areas which affect all of us, and
then working in our own distro communities on our own efforts.

I realize what I'm saying here is kind of a big nebulous undefined
"thing" - but I really have believed for a long time that there is no
reason why we couldn't - or shouldn't be - working together in many
areas.

And if anyone's interested in that, by all means - let's take it to a
new thread and talk about it :)

I'd also just like to note that I think it's awesome(!!!) that the
openSUSE folks (and probably others as well) are watching and
commenting on what Fedora Marketing is up to - Andreas, do you have a
similar list on your side?

-Robyn




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