Attention / Interest / Desire / Action, getfedora.org, or why marketing 'the Fedora project' is a bad idea.

[Mike MacCana]

Hrishikesh Ballal wrote:

>But if you have any suggestions,
>comments brickbats on it please feel free to reply. 
>
My first post to the list.

Basically, marketing the Fedora project is a bad idea. Or at least, not 
an immediate concern.
Very few people care about the project. Those that wish to contribute 
are either part of the project already, or existing Fedora users that 
have decided to contribute and know where to go.

Fedora - *the distro, not the project* - needs a website. 
Fedoraproject.org isn't it, cause of the name. fedora.redhat.com could 
be it,  but with completely different content.

A good example of sucessful OSS marketing is Firefox. When you visit 
mozilla.org or getfirefox.com, what dop you see?

Is the front page taken up by stuff about the mozilla project, and how 
to contribute to it? Maybe even making no mention that it's a web 
browser, like fedora.redhat.com talks primarily describes fedora as an 
'OSS project' rather than an actual linux distro?

IMHO, the primarily focus of Fedora marketing should be a website that
- aimed at users primarily, and developers secondarily

and creates
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action

Think getfedora.org. Joe user doesn't give a damn that 'The Fedora 
Project is an open source project sponsored by Red Hat and supported by 
the Fedora community. It is also a proving ground for new technology 
that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a 
supported product of Red Hat, Inc.'

What they do care about is this:

- What is Fedora?
- Why do they want it?
- Where can they get it?

Mike