"Simon P. Lucy" wrote:
> At 06:21 03/04/2001 -0400, John Dobbins wrote:
>
> >Braden McDaniel wrote:
> >
> > > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Robert Ennis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Thank goodness for a voice from the world of average users. The
> > > > forgotten ones. The silent majority. Without them all of this is self
> > > > gratification, if you know what I mean...
> > >
> > > And you are apparently oblivious to the fact that *self gratification is
> > > what this is all about*. "Scratching an itch," as ESR put it. mozilla.org
> > > does not serve users. It serves developers. Mozilla is a
> > > developer-oriented product. Marketing browsers to the masses is left as
> > > an exercise to clients of the mozilla.org codebase.
> > >
> >
> >What makes you think there will be any clients if you ignore the end users?
> >If the developers ignore the end user, then you'll wind up with an
> >unmarketable product that few clients will bother with and they will soon
> >give up on efforts to market a product that won't sell..
>
> This is an old argument, When people say Mozilla is a developer product
> they don't mean that end users are ignored but that the process is much
> more like an R&D development within an organisation. Its the distributors
> of builds that will shape product based on Mozilla development. To say
> there will be a 'Mozilla' browser is more like saying that there is a
> reference model.
>
> Does mozilla.org suffer because there is no equivalent to a Marketing
> head? Very possibly.
>
Possibly?
Let me put it this way. Say I own an ISP. Who is going to convince me to adopt
Mozilla? Why should I create a branded version that will be on every cd I send to
a customer?
What's in it for me?
Not only do I not give a damn about standards, I would prefer that it NOT adhere
too closely to the W3C. Why? Because every time a page doesn't look right I might
get a support call that costs me money. I don't care if it's the browsers fault
or the page authors fault. The only thing that matters to me is that my customers
don't call the help desk, and if MSIE results in fewer calls then for my purposes
it's the better browser.
It costs me money to train the people at my Help desk. That themes thing makes it
harder for me to train them. I can't just give them a script that says "If foo is
happening tell customer to hit the circle with the x in it". I have extra
training costs, yet the number of available themes is disappointing because they
are too hard for the average person to write. Themes may have potential as a
marketing tool but for now all they do is cost me money.
If I stick with MSIE MS will assist me in marketing, and if nothing else they are
very good at marketing. Who is there at Mozilla to help me with marketing?
Nobody. What marketing tools do you have that will help me? Graphics that some of
my customers will call and raise hell about? Yep, that's just the kind of help I
looking for. No thank you!
These are the kind of arguments that will take place in potential clients. Since
Mozilla doesn't have a Marketing Department it will lack the kind of features
that would convince an ISP that that they can make money off supporting the
product, and there won't be anyone to make a pitch for the features that it does
have.
If you want Mozilla to be more than a three year long exercise in masturbation
for a bunch of developers, then it's time to start thinking about marketing the
lizard.
Why should John's ISP develop a branded lizard?
John,
