This is a question that really should be directed to -project, not marketing, because of the issues you've identified. But as such, you should know that a strategy team has existed that is developing the identity message and the strategy is now before the board for review and hopefully we'll have an official statement that will answer some of your questions. However, let me go ahead and try to answer some of your questions below.
On Wed, 2011-02-09 at 00:59 +0530, Manu Gupta wrote: > Hi all, > > What does openSUSE focus on > > 1. Do we focus on Desktop? > 2. Do we focus on Servers? > 3. We say we focus on balance,but what does that actually mean? As identified by the strategy team, openSUSE is many things to many people. For some it is a desktop, and for others it is a server. This is, in fact, the strength of the openSUSE distro in that we put great focus on both sides. > > I ask this because > > 1. We are not as polished as a Desktop > Can you explain why you feel this is so? openSUSE actually has a reputation for being well-polished towards technical and professional users. Granted others feel that their distro is more polished for various reasons. That's the nature of the beast when we all become creatures of habit. But there are tons of reviews over the years lauding openSUSE for its polished look and feel. This is a question that should be posed to the specific Desktop teams, or -project. Not Marketing. We don't create the products. > 2. Our life cycle is not suited for Servers / Sysadmins. > We offer an 18-month life-cycle for support. This is not a bad amount for a free distro. If you're expecting longer support for critical systems, then that's what paid support servers are for. Nevertheless, we now have Tumbleweed which further enhances our life-support cycle. So we're actually improving on this. openSUSE is about stability and good security. And that is also what makes our servers good for implementation. Nevertheless, if you want longer life cycle, you can't have the chicken without the egg. Longer life cycle means having people around that can package for even older distro versions. We simply don't have that manpower yet. > 3. Nor are we exactly rolling releases, might be tumbleweed but there > are 100s of old packages too > > I think we should be able to change that with 11.4 release atleast that > helps a lot. So if we do not decide it soon, we will certainly go under > an already existing identity crisis which is not good for the community. > > We should regardless of anything, yes even the strategy (although more > alligned with it is preferable) must have a few plans to focus on for > 11.4 release. Attracting a particular audience should change a lot of > perspective outside the community. > > Regards > Manu > Again, as I refer back to what I have been talking about lately... the focus of the marketing team, as an identity and message, needs to be about the Project, not just about the distro. Our focus should be on why you should contribute to the Project (which is much more than a distro) and attracting more developers and packagers. With a larger ecosystem, we can address specific questions you have raised above more easily. But again... the questions you are raising above are to be directed to the project, not to the marketing team, because the marketing team isn't the producer. :-) All of this will be brought up for discussion at the hackfest coming up in 2 weeks. Making sure we understand the message that the Project wants us to send out, which is that we are an ecosystem, much more than a distro. Bryen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
