Koh Choon Lin wrote:
Hi!
I was checking at the forum, and i find that we have a rise of incoming
users (:)), most of them kind of new to the 100% free software concept.
While the purpose of gNewSense is to provide a completely free operating
system, it is not the goal to explain in details the philosophy of free
software. As such, I recommend linking GNU and FSF articles to provide a brief
explanation of what free software is about. RMS's writings are more than
sufficient and easy enough to read for even beginners to the free world.
I agree that explaining the whole philosophy is not the primary goal of
gNewSense. But we do need to explain enough so that users know what this
project is about. You can't just say "gNewSense is 100% Free Software.
Now go read some essays about that over there [link to FSF/GNU]". People
will get bored or tired (or even scared) before even attempting to read
any further.
If we want to explain our goal to geeks then pages like
http://www.gnewsense.org/Main/Mission and
http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Main/WhyFreeSoftware do a nice job, although
it wouldn't hurt to put them more in the spotlight.
If we want to reach a broad audience and do some marketing, then a good
look at Ubuntu is in order. It would be nice if we could come up with a
short catchphrase that just about captures the essence of the project
(like "Linux for Human Beings"). That should be on the front page, with
some fancy design (didn't we already have a new design by the way?) and
the logo. Slap some buttons on there to link to:
- Mission / Find out more: no more than 2 paragraphs explaining Free
Software and it's importants in crystal clear Teletubbie terms (e.g. not
even mentioning source code)
- Screenshots (not very useful of course, but everybody loves screenshots)
- FAQ
- Translations (ideally detect preferred language)
- Download
- News
- Community (or two links: "Get support" and "Get involved")
The people from the FSF, GNU and especially those from GNU/Linux Matters
do a great job explaining about Free software. But new users are easily
confused. For example, if gNewSense would point to softwareliberty.com,
which points to getgnulinux.org, which points to Ubuntu, then does that
mean that it's better to use Ubuntu than gNewSense? Even bringing up
another website for an explanation about the project might be scary for
some people. That's why I think it's better to have the basic
information on our own website.
I realize that this is a lot of hard work, especially from people with
creative skills. But I think it would do a lot to attract more users
(and contributors).
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