Hi, On 4/5/07, Alex Karasulu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi all, OK I'm joking a bit about the title but we need someone to keep and eye out and start thinking about how to spread the word about Apache Directory products. We've got a lot of good stuff here and we don't market our goods. Other analogous products out there are being plastered all over the place and many features are publicized when some boast more about vaporware then existing software. Of course we will do no such thing but marketing what we do have is a good idea IMHO.
Definitively ! We're not in the business of competing with others but just about having
fun. However I get a bit irritated when people put down our project. Someone recently told me that a high level person at SUN involved with OpenDS said at a major conference that they're going to plow right over us because we have no marketing behind our product or no roadmap. I wonder why they made no mention of features instead to be the deciding factor :).
may be they are scared ? Debunking is a common tactic when you feel like loosing control ... We should not consider such a behavior really important. Critics are good to hear. The
comments made were something to the effect of we're just having fun building it: which is true in that respect. The product of a labor of love goes much further IMO than something you just get paid to do. Anyways it does not hurt to spread the word about ApacheDS, LS and Triplesec. We could post more on various mailing lists, forums like freshmeat/slashdot, TSS, ldapguru, wikipedia and other sites not to mention blogging about the features we introduce into these products. I think all of us in the community have something we can do. No one person can do it alone however it would be nice to have someone thinking about and feeling out how we are doing it and keeping tabs on this aspect of our project. We don't really have this kind of role at Apache however IMO I think it's a shortcoming. Companies like SUN have dedicated paid personal focused specifically on these aspects. It's time for the role to emerge here.
yes. And it deserve someone with good writing skills, but much more important is the know how. So is anyone interested in volunteering to help us in these capacities?
(1) keep an eye on the pulse of Apache Directory products out there on the Internet (2) prodding us to blog more and spread the word more (3) coming up with new ideas on how to increase Directory product uptake (4) making sure every significant release has some press (5) keep an eye out for new features introduced by other products that will be worth while in ours (6) tracking AD product uptake by users and getting their feedback
We currently have some info through google analytics : 17 000 visitors since mid-february, 1366 dowloads for LdapStudio 744 downloads for the LS plugin Those numbers are good. We also have some reports on some blogs : http://www.c-note.dk/2007/03/30/ldapbrowsers/ (we didn't ask for this post, but, hem, I like it : "...Or you if you have eclipse installed already then you can add http://directory.apache.org/ldapstudio/update to software updates, and install it that way - even better as you then only will have one eclipse installed. This is almost too good to be true.") Another one in french : http://anothergeekwebsite.com/fr/2007/03/ldapstudio That make me think about one important point : we should also push ADS in France, Germany, Turkey, Korea, Australia, all over the planet :) 2cts. Emmanuel -- Cordialement, Emmanuel Lécharny www.iktek.com
