Peter, I think you're misunderstanding me, perhaps I'm not expressing myself clearly.
I want to avoid at any cost that a lousy experience be associated with "Sugar on a Stick". So I'm against anyone calling anything "Sugar on a Stick Remix", not for it. As I said, a "remix" is only understood by people if the main brand is strong, not yet the case with SoaS (or Fedora or any other GNU/Linux distro). A remix called e.g. "Cream Pie Sugar on a Stick Remix" will fragment the Sugar on a Stick marketing and is bad enough, but if the quality is not there, it will damage the brand even further. There's no way we can QA test a number of variants, so in my view we shouldn't - they should just be called something else. We can avoid variants related to language/keyboard setup and Activity bundles in different ways: a one-page PDF translated into many languages explaining how to do basic locale config, maybe later a first-boot setup wizard. Variants customized for schools should be supported first-tier locally, especially if changes are not just cosmetic (boot screen for example). These could be called "Sugar on a Stick" locally as Sebastian proposes, but not distributed as "Sugar on a Stick". In my view, it's normal and desirable that we encourage variants, we just need for them not to damage the Sugar on a Stick brand. Sean On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Peter Robinson <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Sean, > > On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Sean DALY <[email protected]> wrote: >> This does seem sensible, but I don't see how it will help our >> branding, unless the decision rests with us to allow a "remix" to use >> the brand name. Otherwise, we'll just fragment the brand. What will >> people doing remixes contribute to our marketing? Wouldn't it be >> better if they worked with us? > > But what about quality of the product. If you have someone that does a > bad 'remix' and calls it the name that the upstream, well tested main > line product and people review that bad "Sugar on a Stick" you also > give the brand a bad name. Which then means someone needs to QA all > the various different iterations of various products that are using > SOAS to ensure the user gets a good experience and level of quality > that you would expect of the main SugarLabs SOAS. We don't have the > engineering resources to be able to do that. So your better off > allowing a remix to be be called "Blah Blah SOAS Remix" so there is > inclusion of the brand with in the name but also differentiation. So > it increases the visibility of the brand while also keeping an arms > length appart to ensure the core product doesn't lose the quality of > the Brand due to another variant that may be dodgy. > >> "Remixes" are brand extensions, sometimes called "flankers", which can >> work if a brand is strong. There's not much point doing so with a weak >> brand I'm afraid. I would bet that Fedora is a better-known brand than >> Sugar Labs today, but it's still a very weak brand. (I'm sure One >> Laptop per Child is a better-known brand, which is why it would be far >> more effective for us to do joint marketing with them when they are >> ready.) > > Yes, but if you have a dozen "Sugar on a Stick" variants all called > "Sugar on a Stick" but half of them are complete shit your not going > to end up with a good brand and your worse off when you started > because people have the opinion "that is crap" and you damage the core > Sugar Labs product. > >> What we are trying to do with Sugar Labs is create the conditions for >> a breakout. It's not easy; if it were, everybody would be doing it >> with their brands :-) I've said before that what Sugar on a Stick >> actually *is* can evolve; it's the brand that's fragile and needs >> protection. > > And you want to do that by allowing anyone to use it? That doesn't > protect it in my opinion. > > Regards, > Peter > _______________________________________________ SoaS mailing list [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
