How to push Linux into the mainstream
Gerry Gavigan sees a brave new world in which Linux enthusiasts push the open source concept into the mainstream.
You’ve got your first bit of code accepted into the Linux kernel, just successfully completed a Google Summer of Code project? Or maybe you are a serious Unix guru, with over 20 years of experience? Either way, you “get” FLOSS. And you’ve decided to make a career from it. Now what?
Few of us will have a new idea that is so of the moment that time-to-market (that’s business-speak” for getting there first) will be all that matters, as agreed by that venture capitalist funding you for the next five years. For most of us it will be a lot more mundane.
There may be a job in a large software and services company, there’s at least one we can all name that seems to like FLOSS. But what if you don’t live near the M4 corridor? What if you quite like living in wherever it happens to be? Suddenly we are not talking about technical prowess, we’re talking about commerce and marketing: market building and product awareness.
None of these skills are likely to be core aspirations of the typical technically-oriented person. To an extent we think “it’s a better mousetrap, job done”. In some ways it’s a little bit like the jazz musician with 15,000 chords, 45,000 inversions and immense skill in improvisation waiting for that big record deal while (in my day) Status Quo bang yet out another three chord trick and make a shedload of money.
In any marketing exercise it’s important to do an “environmental scan” to take a look at what’s going on around you.
Well, we all know about “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” They’ve made it on to YouTube, everyone thinks they’re funny and it promotes a certain image. Yes, it takes skill but it also takes money. Quite a lot of money. I don’t know how much, but in the published figures for the Vista fightback campaign involving Seinfeld, they quote $300 million.
But it’s not only clever TV advertising (clever, because even the people that don’t like it are talking about it) the marketing is so all-pervasive. The back page of Private Eye once ran a series of advertisements selling nothing but Microsoft mood music.
Then there’s the editorial bordering on advertorial. My engineering journal limits suggestions for a new business laptop to those using XP or Vista. And then on the back page of the same issue what do I see?
Office Standard 2007, your price £135.13 – you save 55%
Back to school “save up to 90%”
After that there’s the sports competition for techies, with photographs of people wearing cool shades while white water canoeing, BMXing or indulging in similar hearty pursuits and so offering glamour by association.
All of this and other activity builds presence that creates a problem for those that believe they have a superior alternative, especially when we are fighting a market share of well over 90 per cent.
I know Linux does well in the server room, and that Apache has got over 60 per cent of the web server space, but who outside the IT department cares about that? “Intel Inside” was a response to a similar problem.
Paradigm shift
The visible presence, or not, of free software is the desktop. Attempting to compete on the same terms as big players like Apple or Microsoft involves money. How many Get Firefox campaigns do you imagine we could generate?
And therein lies the challenge. FLOSS doesn’t generate large quantities of “surplus value” which can be directed towards expensive marketing – no “flagship store” in London’s glittering West End. When we speak of free software not only do we mean free speech rather than free beer, we also mean free as in markets. In free markets, there are many suppliers (eg think 600 distros) and many customers, with low barriers to entry and exit. In plain English that means it’s very difficult to charge prices above the marginal cost of production, which for a distro, is the download cost of about 10p.
Now, we may all wonder why people buy software when they could get similar or better equivalents available free of charge. But it happens. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
Personally, while I think the new UMPCs highlight the blindingly obvious that free is cheaper than 55 per cent off, I do not think they are going to effect what in marketing jargon is known as a paradigm shift. The typical ordinary user is going to be influenced by a desire to use what gets used at school or at work, and this, plus marketing, is a massive barrier to entry (the market isn’t free). So what to do?
Well, it is possible that the current economic situation represents an opportunity for all of those people working in Free Software to build local businesses based on what is often cited as the big challenge with alternatives to the proprietary behemoths. And we have to look in different places to see the support.
To read Gerry’s views in their entiriety, make sure to buy the relaunch issue of Linux User and Developer, on sale 30 July.
It’s not about marketing, it’s about spreading the idea. You can’t stop the signal.
But the experience of buying a computer with Linux is still quite painful.
But I am working on it.
Rockin regards,
Marco
Marco said: “It’s not about marketing, it’s about spreading the idea”
That’s what marketing *is*
The other problem is that if people pay for something then they value it. If they get something for free then it is perceived as cheap, no-good or (quite literally) worthless.
We still have not got past the “Free as in freedom, not free as in beer” mentality. Perversely enough, if we charge more for free software, more people are likely to want and use it.
Cheers!
: The other problem is that if people pay
: for something then they value it. If they
: get something for free then it is perceived
: as cheap, no-good or (quite literally) worthless.
:
: We still have not got past the “Free as in
: freedom, not free as in beer” mentality.
: Perversely enough, if we charge more for free
: software, more people are likely to want and
: use it.
How often do you pay for the monumental discovery that a fraction of crude oil, when placed in a restricted space and ignited can make you move forwards? Never. It is knowledge that we use for free. It is common property. We no longer even think about it. Does that make it worthless, or as per your theory, mean that don’t use cars? Patently not.
FOSS is the completion of the circle. In the beginning the software was just something that the engineers did to make the bit you paid for work. Then as it got more complicated people started making you pay for it separately to make more money, except that we kind of got hooked on this and have yet to move on.
We have now *done* the operating system and basic productivity apps, all bar the shouting. I can already hear the wails of protest from those who are still hard at work perfecting these things and I hope they’ll bear with me for a moment. All the work on these things is now pretty much incremental and perfecting. There is nothing earth shaking going on in this arena any more. We need to focus our concentration and resources on the vast swathes of functionality that have not been done. What we are doing now is piling more and more money into an area of the map that we have paid for 100 times already. Why? Because there is a company who has engineered themselves into a position where they can do that at will. They have found a hook, driven it in to the hilt and are now defending it at all costs, with tactics that have even been found to be criminal several times now.
However, all is not lost. Their vicious tactics and complete intransigence is going to backfire. This is not wishful thinking, just a close observance of history.
There has been an equal and opposite force in operation for the last 15 or so years. The energy this company put into their offensive has been opposed and turned to the production of an entirely separate and unassailable stack of software that can do everything that their own software can do, but in a manner that means they cannot own it. In fact nobody can, because everybody does; it is common property, like the common land of old England. We know we need it, so instead of allowing the monopolistic interests of the local baron to control it, to the detriment of all, it is owned in common by the people that use it. An immensely powerful idea.
I have watched this stuff hurtling through space for the last 10 years plus following it’s trajectory forwards and waiting for the inevitable impact. We are now at the niggle-nit-picky stage where the menus on “The Gimp” aren’t quite as something or other as the menus on “Photoshop” and Open Office looks like a less recent version of another Office Suite. Gone are the days of “It doesn’t work on my laptop” and “It is virtually impossible to install”. I am now watching it stretch the elastic holding it back to an alarming extent. Once it has broken through into the public imagination, as it did in the machine room years ago, people will remember the nightmare days of “Reinstalling Windows” with a kind of morbid wry smile.
“Why on earth did we keep paying for that stuff?”
You tell me friends. You tell me.
Open software already is in the mainstream, big style, practically all web users use it every day. Apple OSX is totally dependant upon it.
Software is a linguistic choice, French is only “better” than English to a French man.
You don’t need to market or promote open software at all, it is good enough to simply integrate with existing systems.
The system integrator is the translator in the lingustic model of open software adoption.
There is no need to talk about open software integration, just do it.
You make plenty of money off the non open work to pay for the open work.
You can see this as a Robin Hood role, which competes well with the propitiatory only model of the robbing hood.
The author replies…
I am pleased to see that people have taken the trouble to comment and also the general positive tone.
While I agree with the points made, I think we are in danger of talking to ourselves. If any of us were to go into the high street and ask randomly about computers, we would discover a different picture.
The popular face of ICT is proprietary software and no sense of personal control. In their world computers “wear out” and need replacing. This is the mountain we need to climb.
I am in the process of turning the talking into walking, currently scratching my head over the business model and market positioning.
Perhaps I’ll get the opportunity to report progress here
Gerry
The U.S. Government is soliciting ideas from current government employees and contractors for ideas on saving money.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/save/SaveAwardHomePage/
Unfortunately, one has to be a U.S. Federal Employee or contractor to participate in the Save Award.
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