On Tuesday 19 Oct 2010 11:38:39 Michael Scherer wrote: > Le mardi 19 octobre 2010 à 09:06 +1300, Graham Lauder a écrit : > > On Tuesday 19 Oct 2010 04:27:29 Frank Griffin wrote: > > > In FOSS, it doesn't. If enough people agree with your objective, you > > > may find that you have enough critical mass to produce a derived distro > > > with a face and personality which matches your objectives. > > > > This is one of the interesting elements of FOSS marketing that I've > > talked about in the past. That Marketing department, which in a > > corporate world always has the ear of management more so than the > > Development people simply because of human interaction capabilities, has > > to turn it's focus inward. The problem is, an one I've been trying to > > avoid here, is that it becomes insular to the exclusion of all else and > > then the community stagnates and spirals into irrelevancy. For the > > community to grow there has to be a dynamism, (and I'm talking grow in > > terms of the community of contributors) Userland is the big billboard > > of that dynamism. Ubuntu for all it's faults and annoyances has taught > > us one thing, high visibility in Userland attracts contributors. > > Then what Fedora and Debian has taught us ? > > Because AFAIK there is also lots of contributors in Fedora, as there is > in Debian, and I think they didn't really choose the high visibility > path to get them. So I do not think we can really find a direct > correlation between "ubuntu has lots of users" and "there is lots of > contribution".
Debian is an interesting case in viral marketing in a highly interconnected demographic. I always remember the "OMG we have a new release!" that used to race round the maillists and Usergroups. It never really had a market share, rather it had almost a monopoly in its chosen demographic. It is deliberately eclectic and famously stubborn and being part of the community is as important as the software itself, I mean he named it after his wife and himself, Deb and Ian, how cool is that. It was just that attitude that endeared it to it's chosen community and good on them. Slackware and Gentoo have a similar ethic. And more power to them. It wasn't until Ubuntu came along that Debian gained much in the way of widespread traction. However it was it's obsession with stability that attracted the Mark. They could afford to break things because they had this super stable backstop, but at the end of the day, Debian counts the Ubuntu user as it's community, I would be interested to know how many more developers Debian picked up in the wake of Ubuntu's popularity, I certainly know quite a few. Certainly HPs support was post Ubuntu startup Fedora has the benefit of age, being around a long time and focusing in the corporate space is a good way to lift profile in your preferred market. I don't have any figures unfortunately but I would suspect many came from Red Hat sites. In any case, both are in fact very small in terms of the whole desktop market and even in terms of all developers. > > My own opinion is that Canonical pay 5 people full time to take care of > the community growth > ( http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/07/26/the-five-horsemen/ ), and that's > the main reason for contribution from outsiders. Tsk a badly dressed marketing team ;) I'm not denying that marketing to bring in Code Contributors is a necessary thing and in fact we've already identified this group as our initial, primary target market, however the fact that Ubuntu is high profile out in the market place gives Jono and crew a hell of a lot more leverage to bring in new talent. > The same goes for > Fedora and Redhat > ( http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CommunityArchitecture ) It's interesting that you point to that URL, I'm a big believer in the Biology of Community that the Fedora guys talk about. The principle idea behind it is that once a community reaches a critical mass it becomes self sustaining, in the case of the Mageia community that would be the point where you could remove all of the founders from the mix and it would keep going. To me that requires a whole community, it is a holistic beast. Yes you can continue a community that rides on the coat tails of a single person or core group but is it self sustaining. Fedora has reached this point I think and would continue if RedHat was removed from the equation. Would Ubuntu continue without Shuttleworth and Canonical, I'm not sure, but I reckon they are a long way toward it. OOo wasn't, but LibreOffice has the opportunity to be. Debian, I don't know the community well enough to comment. The point is that community goes right across the spectrum of users Not enough of the community at the User end of the spectrum is as untenable as not enough at the Makers end. The trick is balance, that's what the Fedora project has taught us Cheers GL -- Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant. INGOTs Assessor Trainer (International Grades in Open Technologies) www.theingots.org
