SWOT - Comparative Analysis

Thu Jun 17 17:55:42 UTC 2010

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I'll give a thumbs-up to that idea.  :) I wonder if there are any
upcoming events where we might all be where we could do a BoF or
something to that effect, at least as a starting point?

>
> 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
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > marketing mailing list
>>> > marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
>>> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>>> >
>>> --
>>> marketing mailing list
>>> marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
>>> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> nelson marques
>> nmo.marques at gmail.com
>>
>> --
>> marketing mailing list
>> marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
>> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>>
> --
> marketing mailing list
> marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>