Hello, I've been advocating Open Source and Linux since the year 2000. I've helped individuals and organizations with Microsoft->Linux migration, held Linux-courses, written many Linux guides / web sites and a about one week my company launched a Finland-wide Linux support service (http://www.linux-tuki.fi/).
Based on my experience, here are my ideas on how to break Microsoft's evil monopoly and I hope you could comment on them. First of all, why do organizations/people choose Linux: + it's secure (no virus) + technically advanced, has some good applications and features + it's low-cost to get + it's easy to modify + it's free as in free speech And why some do NOT choose Linux: - it causes cognitive stress: forces people to learn new and abandon old - hard to find Linux-trained administrators and support services - sometimes high cost to run if you need to customize it a lot - searching for and choosing a suitable Linux-counterpart of the Windows-programs in use is difficult, and some Windows-applications are even impossible to replace - migrating files, documents and information into Linux and its applications require a lot of work and is error prone - about 80% of general population haven't even heard of Linux yet - it's difficult to know how well some specific hardware is supported We should of course keep doing the things why people choose Linux, but the obstacles could be tackled like this: ==> spread Firefox and OpenOffice.org Switching from IE to Firefox is a small and painless task, and thus imposes very little stress on the user. Switching from MS-Office to OpenOffice.org requires more work in converting documents, but still the cognitive stress level stays low because the option of switching back to MS-Office temporary is available. Finally, for a user that already knows Firefox and OpenOffice.org going into Linux will be much less painful, since the user is no longer required to learn everything new at once. In fact our beloved dictator for life ;) is sponsoring TheOpenCD-project and Google is paying webmasters to promote Firefox (http://www.explorerdestroyer.com/) but the key productivity tool OpenOffice.org hasn't got enough visibility. Does anybody want to set up a www.switch2openoffice.org -web site? Of course, it should say somewhere "If you liked this, you'll love Ubuntu" :) ==> still 80% haven't heard of Linux, even less of Ubuntu We need more attractive marketing material, especially with contents that non-technical people will understand. We should also write some articles about Ubuntu and try to offer them to printed magazines. In my experience, magazines and newspapers accept and publish material that is well written and in a such format that makes it easy for the journalist to shorten so that it fits between the advertisements. I've done a site in Finnish (http://ubuntu.sange.fi/) and if somebody wants to help me we could make a similar version in English. ==> hardware certification for the Linux-kernel All hardware manufacturers should clearly state in their marketing material if a driver for Linux is available, and since what kernel version. They don't need to certify for a whole distribution or LSB. Somehow we should get the manufacturers to understand that having a penguin on their product is going to attract all the Linux-using customers who otherwise worry about finding supported hardware. I guess that at some point when a critical mass is reached, hardware manufacturers will start competing on who sells the most Linux-friendly systems and eventually who sells the best pre-installed Linux systems :) ..and thus Microsoft's OEM tax will be abolished. Sorry for a long message and thanks if you read it! -- | Otto Kekäläinen | Sange Coop | Helsinki, Finland | http://www.sange.fi/ -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
