SWOT - Comparative Analysis

Thu Jun 17 17:18:31 UTC 2010

At Sugar Labs my approach to this is: our competition is proprietary
(Flash on Windows for example), while cooperation with other FOSS
projects will raise all boats and advance the cause of software
freedom.

Put another way: combined desktop marketshare of GNU/Linux is around
2%, so there's certainly enough work to do competing with the other
98% while not expending energy dragging down free software advocates.

What  would like to see is a meeting of the marketing minds from
different FOSS projects. Marketing gets a bad rap from engineers,
changing that mindset in our communities is a major challenge.

Sean

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:45 PM, 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
> ________________________________
> From: marketing-bounces at lists.fedoraproject.org
> <marketing-bounces at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> To: For discussions about marketing and expanding the Fedora user base
> <marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Sent: Thu Jun 17 11:45:44 2010
> Subject: Re: SWOT - Comparative Analysis
>
>
>
> 2010/6/17 Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com>
>>
>> Nelson, it's great that you are doing this. At Sugar Labs I've been
>> carrying it around in my head for a year. I was recently persuaded
>> that this was not the best approach :-) that it was worth the risk to
>> publish our strategy including SWOT analysis. I'll be doing that soon.
>
> If my work does help you, please feel free to use it and I'm available to
> help with concepts if you wish.
> As for sharing the SWOT, you should actually shared your lower level
> strategic documents, such as SWOT, the availability of such shows commitment
> and might attract new investors.
>
>
>>
>> The SL marketing strategy, targeted at teachers (with our limited
>> means - no advertising budget, so heavy emphasis on PR) is based upon
>> taking share from the market leader for desktops and netbooks, MS
>> Windows, by offering an alternative better suited for the education
>> sector, and particularly in a market (K-6) where the market leading
>> proprietary offer is weak.
>
> My concern here is that usually market share leaders are everything except
> weak ;) proprietary or not.
>
>
>>
>> We feel that it is natural to compare
>> GNU/Linux distros in a competitive analysis, but that greater strides
>> can be achieved by trying to woo teachers from Windows to "other" - in
>> our case Sugar over GNU/Linux. We struggle against two major barriers
>> - the unfamiliarity barrier and the installation barrier, both of
>> which are daunting for nontechie teachers.
>
> I've never tried Sugar, but I've seen some screenshots, and to be honest,
> you guys are doing a great job on the visual identity of Sugar. That's a
> step of differentiation that few dare to give, and honestly I believe you
> are doing it the right way.
>
> As for users and install... most people can't even install windows from a
> normal DVD. For a standalone isntalation, it's probably easier to install
> Linux than just Windows... There are fields in which no one is betting at
> the moment that probably would help you achieving that goal ;) I'll let go a
> quick swift example:
>
> * Are they aware on how a Linux Filesystem is organized ? (This will break a
> lot of barriers, understanding the concepts behind /proc /dev /home /usr...
> and so on. There is no C:! PANIC!
>
>
>>
>> Sugar on a Stick is our
>> approach to lowering these two barriers; "does not touch the hard
>> disk" is one of our central claims. "Boots most anything, runs under
>> Windows and OSX with virtualization" is another - we know that
>> classrooms often have old and mismatched hardware, and teachers little
>> or no say in education IT purchases. Our hope is that teachers will
>> first see that another way is possible, and from there overcome the
>> installation barrier.
>>
>> All that said, if the core target for Fedora is potential
>> contributors, attacking Windows may not make sense - it may indeed be
>> preferable to spotlight Fedora compared to other distros.
>
> On a personal remark to this... Why compare to other distro's and in why
> grounds will we be making such comparisons ?
>
> My point with the comparison is simple... To demonstrate the real effect of
> 'segmentation' and 'positioning' which are two concepts that I believe some
> people really don't understand. Through a comparison it will be easy to see
> such.
>
> I think that to demonstrate the real face of Fedora we should compare it to
> real competitors, this will highlight the true strengths of Fedora, and in
> some ways also the weaknesses, which of course will be at some point reduced
> by the fact of our user base targets.
>
> As a remark, I would also like to leave a note that for most of the media
> approaches of Sugar, I can say your efforts are being taken to a good port.
> I hope everything goes ok... as for the teachers... I would try to
> understand their basic needs... I would recommend something for you to do,
> if not done already before...
>
> Focus Group > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_group
>
> This sort of research might help and it does not require expensive
> budgets... in fact you can even approach a school and use it as a pilot for
> this. I'm pretty sure most schools would help and many teachers would
> probably be happy to participate in this. There is actually no need for much
> technical knowledge to run a focus group as in a way it's mainly supported
> by common sense... and it actually should not be technical at all.
>
> My advice would be to gather 10/12 teachers for hour and half / 2 hours and
> have them talking and discussing the subject and the things they would be
> looking for in a product such as Sugar.
>
> nelson
>
>>
>> Sean
>> Sugar Labs Marketing Coordinator
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 5:12 PM, nelson marques <nmo.marques at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> >  For SWOT (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/SWOT) and specially
>> > to
>> > comparative Analysis
>> > (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/SWOT#Comparative_Analysis) I
>> > need
>> > a couple of guidelines, for which I will not decide upon, since I'm not
>> > the
>> > most qualified person to engage or set on stone those.
>> >
>> >  I've proposed on the layout the following comparative analysis:
>> >
>> >  - Fedora and Ubuntu
>> >  - Fedora and openSuSE
>> >  - Fedora and Debian
>> >  - Fedora and Slackware
>> >  - Fedora and Arch Linux
>> >
>> >
>> >  To perform this, I'm going to cover 2 things from the marketing
>> > perspective:
>> >  1. Marketing Mix
>> >  2. Communication Mix
>> >
>> >  This 2 points I can manage well and there won't be much trouble, but I
>> > would like to place also some more information on this, something we can
>> > translate into charts or graphs and that on the end we can actually
>> > combine
>> > them all.
>> >
>> >  I was thinking on the following:
>> >
>> >  > Ease of Installation (rated in scale, 1-10);
>> >  > Out of the Box install success in common hardware (mainstream
>> > hardware)
>> >  > Out of the Box security;
>> >  > Average Time of Installation;
>> >  > Boot time (power on to GDM login);
>> >
>> >  Now, what more should we use to complete it? Factors we can measure in
>> > a
>> > scale from 1-10 and that are relevant in therms of comparison to another
>> > distros, any more suggestions?
>> >
>> > --
>> > nelson marques
>> > nmo.marques at gmail.com
>> >
>> > --
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>> >
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>
>
>
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> nelson marques
> nmo.marques at gmail.com
>
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