On 7/15/07, Richard Reichenbacher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

 You need to think about the average everyday human being here.  If you've
ever worked help desk you might have a general understanding of how very
little your average person knows about computers.  Hell even most of the IT
people I've worked with had little to no  idea what Linux is all about.  So
when advertising to the mass market, saying that it's based on GNU/Linux
means absolutely nothing to these people.  The more complicated it sounds to
them, the less likely they are to buy it.



One of the most alluring things about the iPhone is that you can give it
to ANYBODY and within minutes they will be able to use just about every
feature of the phone, even if there aren't all that many.  If this phone is
going to make it in the real world then it needs to be useable and enjoyable
to use, by everyone from Linus Torvalds himself, to Joe Bloe the milkman
that never owned a cell phone before in his life and it needs to marketed
the same way.  Just about everyone in the open source community already
knows about OpenMoko and what it's capable of, next step is letting the rest
of the world know.



Richard


I agree that it needs to be usable, of course. But part of the issue is that
there needs to be some consumer education as well. The openmoko project can
be an ambassador of the FOSS world to Joe consumer. If the argument is that
the average person doesn't know what Linux is, then openmoko can
demonstrated it. What is the point of all this anyways: promoting freedom.
The consumer isn't an idiot, although MS would want us all to believe it. If
you don't like Linux use "Powered by FOSS". But don't believe the FUD.

If we don't get the message out, we are doing all of ourselves a disservice
in the long run.

Jae
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