'Til All Are One

Lately, I’ve been think­ing more than ever about ways to pro­mote free and open source soft­ware to a non-​​technical crowd. This has largely been promp­ted by the Edu­ca­tion Expo in Sydney, for which I am co-​​ordinating the Linux Aus­tralia stand (Stand F9). Cur­rently on my mind is Open CeBIT, which is right around the corner. I’ve been doing some (for­tu­nately not all) plan­ning for two stands, my employer’s and Linux Australia’s.

Here are some thoughts I have had regard­ing FOSS mar­ket­ing. It’s a bit of a jumble, but hope­fully it comes of some help.

• Mar­ket­ing is just struc­tured, meth­od­ical, non-​​rabid evan­gel­ism. It isn’t inher­ently dirty, and it is not syn­onym­ous with advert­ising (advert­ising can be a part of mar­ket­ing, but the two aren’t con­joined). We in the FOSS com­munity need to get over the stigma that is some­times attached to ‘mar­ket­ing’, so that we may har­ness it for good and not evil.
• Identify your tar­get audi­ence, then determ­ine what kinds of ques­tions they will be asking/​thinking. This is Mar­ket­ing 101, but it can be easy to lose sight of. While can be good to cast a wide net, being tac­tic­ally focused can often yield bet­ter res­ults. For the Edu­ca­tion Expo we have a leaf­let spe­cific­ally for stu­dents, and for CeBIT we have one for busi­nesses.
• As a follow-​​on from the pre­vi­ous point, know whom to keep on-​​side. While your school/​university might be using Microsoft products, that doesn’t neces­sar­ily mean that they are in bed with Bill Gates. Don’t assume malice when the more likely reason is simple ignor­ance or mis­un­der­stand­ing. Writ­ing an accus­at­ive art­icle in your stu­dent paper might give you a tem­por­ary sense of sat­is­fac­tion, but such a hos­tile approach is more than likely to back­fire on you and cement the Establishment’s neg­at­ive (or lack of) opin­ion on FOSS. Try to gently edu­cate, not censure.
• Rel­ev­ant case stud­ies are pure gold. If you’re deal­ing with the edu­ca­tion sec­tor, talk about suc­cess­ful school deploy­ments, inter­est­ing pro­jects like One Laptop Per Child and appro­pri­ate devices like the Asus Eee PC.
• Ref­er­en­cing hon­est, inde­pend­ent stud­ies can be much more per­suas­ive than refer­ring to press releases or vendor-​​sponsored reports.
• There are some angles that might not dir­ectly apply to the tar­get professions/​market, but might peri­pher­ally be of interest to people. This includes things like the bene­fits to the local eco­nomy and industry, the envir­on­ment, gov­ern­ment and so on.
• Most people either have chil­dren, are chil­dren or have a soft spot for chil­dren. FOSS is great for kids and edu­ca­tion, so be able to talk about that! Par­ents are always look­ing for ways to get their kids engaged in fun and con­struct­ive activ­it­ies, if only so that they can have five minutes of peace and quiet in the house
• Focus on value, not cost. It might not cost any­thing to acquire and use FOSS, but people are nat­ur­ally scep­tical of things that are pro­moted as hav­ing no cost (and really, who can blame them?). Lead­ing your argu­ment with “it’s free” leaves people to won­der if there is a catch or if the product is of a lesser qual­ity. To take Open​Of​fice​.org as an example, it com­pares very favour­ably to Microsoft Office in terms of func­tion­al­ity and of course free­dom. To stress the ‘free­ware’ angle is to sell it short, and could leave your listener to believe that it’s just an ‘el cheapo’ knock-​​off. The fact that many com­pan­ies (e.g. Sun, Nov­ell, IBM) con­trib­ute to and bene­fit from OpenOffice.org’s devel­op­ment is evid­ence that it is of a high stand­ard and is of eco­nomic value. Fire­fox is a great example to use, as almost every­one has some famili­ar­ity with it. Fire­fox has benefited greatly from Google and AOL, to name but two major con­trib­ut­ors. In turn, these com­pan­ies have built busi­ness mod­els around it (not so much AOL these days, but they are still prob­ably the largest con­trib­utor overall).
• FOSS is very pro-​​free-​​market, and is in fact sim­ilar to the ideal held by many eco­nom­ists known as per­fect com­pet­i­tion. As already men­tioned, Linux has and con­tin­ues to be bene­fi­cial to a very wide range of com­pan­ies and industries.
• Free­dom is vital, but I find that people nor­mally don’t under­stand if you begin your explan­a­tion by talk­ing about dis­trib­uted devel­op­ment or Soft­ware Libre. Start by talk­ing about more obvi­ous bene­fits, like soft­ware qual­ity, rapid devel­op­ment, long-​​term afford­ab­il­ity, reli­ab­il­ity and so on. This will inev­it­ably lead people to won­der how this can be achieved, and of course the answer is that it is all Free Soft­ware. Then you have your open­ing to talk about soft­ware free­dom and the FOSS com­munity, and it will seem much more rel­ev­ant to your audi­ence. This isn’t a mat­ter of de-​​emphasising Free­dom, but rather a way to pre­pare your audi­ence so that they can be more recept­ive to it.
• Of course, there are the age-​​old argu­ments versus Win­dows sur­round­ing speed, vir­uses, and so on. But it is bet­ter to keep the Microsoft-​​bashing to a min­imum. Going off on an anti-​​Microsoft rant only fuels those who like to falsely label FOSS sup­port­ers as communists/​anarchists/​anti-​​capitalists.
• Nev­er­the­less, pro­pri­et­ary soft­ware is poten­tially cap­able of match­ing FOSS for qual­ity, speed, secur­ity, etc.. The one thing they can­not match is Free­dom. Free­dom is our fun­da­mental advantage.
• Ana­lo­gies to parts of every­day life can help to make people con­nect with the ideas behind FOSS. Simple things like shar­ing and modi­fy­ing recipes, lend­ing a book, open­ing the bon­net of your car and remix­ing music are already accep­ted (indeed, expec­ted) by the gen­eral popu­lace, and have dir­ect par­al­lels to the prin­ciples of FOSS.
• Speak­ing of ana­lo­gies and examples, appro­pri­ate ones are closer than you may think. Just about every­one uses FOSS in some form or other. Fire­fox, Open​Of​fice​.org, the GIMP, Google, You­tube, Face­book, Wiki­pe­dia and Apache are all great examples. There is noth­ing to be afraid of.
• Mac OS X users are already pro­lific users of FOSS, as their oper­at­ing sys­tem con­tains some BSD, Samba, CUPS and more. They are famil­iar with FOSS without even know­ing it.
• EULAs and DRM mean that the soft­ware or media file that you just bought isn’t really owned by you. Your rights are restric­ted and can be revoked at any time. This should be cause for con­cern for any consumer.
• It might help to cap­it­al­ise Free Soft­ware in doc­u­ment­a­tion, as a means of emphasis and to dif­fer­en­ti­ate from freeware.
• Be hon­est! Free soft­ware is inher­ently hon­est and account­able by vir­tue of being open. We should be using his hon­esty and open­ness as our advant­age. Remem­ber that there’s a dif­fer­ence between explain­ing some­thing in an attract­ive way and out­right lying. Don’t make FOSS sound bet­ter than it really is. Noth­ing is per­fect, and if you make FOSS sound per­fect you’ll likely be met with sus­pi­cion. Linux isn’t Win­dows — it does look an feel dif­fer­ent. But it’s not neces­sar­ily any bet­ter or worse (depend­ing on the par­tic­u­lar soft­ware in ques­tion), it’s just a bit dif­fer­ent. If you lead people to think that Open​Of​fice​.org is the same as Microsoft Office, they might rail against it at the slight­est dif­fer­ence they find. It’s dif­fer­ent, but cer­tainly no more dif­fer­ent than Office 2003 is from Office 2007. At the end of the day, it’s about man­aging expect­a­tions — por­tray­ing FOSS in a pos­it­ive light but not cre­at­ing unreal­istic hopes. The last thing we want are a bat­talion of users dis­gruntled because they expec­ted FOSS to be able to vacuum their house. Those people will be far less likely to try FOSS again, even years later.
• As a corol­lary of the pre­vi­ous point, advocacy is about man­aging expect­a­tions. Set real­istic expect­a­tions and people will be less likely to be dis­ap­poin­ted in the longer term.
• Avoid sound­ing like you’re selling snake oil. Copi­ous use of all-​​caps, bold text and exclam­a­tion marks runs the risk of mak­ing your well-​​intentioned writ­ing look like just another scam.
• Be pos­it­ive! People don’t want to read bad news, and there’s plenty of good stuff to say about FOSS. Hon­esty takes pri­or­ity, but phrase it well.
• Be pre­pared to fight FUD, but remain positive.
• Free soft­ware is more trust­worthy. Would you trust your pri­vacy and sens­it­ive data (Web brows­ing his­tory, e-​​mail, fin­an­cial records, etc.) to non-​​auditable soft­ware? Iden­tity theft and other forms of cyber­crime are a major and under­ap­pre­ci­ated prob­lem. The old asser­tion that nobody would bother to “hack” into your home com­puter is mis­lead­ing, as most intru­sions are made by bots and worms.
• A pic­ture can tell a thou­sand words. A video can tell a mil­lion. A good screen­cast works won­ders. If you’re run­ning a stand at an expo, have a mon­itor play­ing a pile of screen­casts in a con­tinu­ous loop, with sub­titles (because people are unlikely to be able to hear any­thing on a crowded show floor).
• Inter­na­tion­al­isa­tion and Access­ib­il­ity can be power­ful draw­cards for some, espe­cially those of non-​​English speak­ing backgrounds.
• Not every­body loves FOSS (yet), but few can argue against the mer­its of open stand­ards. Most FOSS is built around open standards.
• Open stand­ards are at least as import­ant as Free Soft­ware. Don’t con­flate the two — pro­pri­et­ary soft­ware can employ open stand­ards. Even if someone rejects Open​Of​fice​.org, I’d feel some solace know­ing that they’re con­vert­ing their MS Office doc­u­ments to PDF (an open stand­ard) for shar­ing with others.
• Make it as easy as pos­sible for people to get involved. Hand out CDs or DVDs with soft­ware use­ful to your audi­ence, like Ubuntu/​Edubuntu and the OpenDisc/​OpenE­duca­tionDisc. Don’t expect people to jump ship straight to Linux. Let them get their feet wet first with FOSS apps on Win­dows, LiveCDs, dual boots and so on. Baby steps are much easier to make than massive strides.
• Wel­come people to get involved in your com­munity. Ask them to join your mail­ing lists. Invite them to your next LUG meet­ing. Make sure they are fully aware that there’s a vibrant com­munity out there to help them. They can even make friends and employment/​business contacts.
• There’s only so much that you can include in a short article/​spiel, so be sure to refer to other resources that have more inform­a­tion. Quote or link to sources if you feel they do a good job — there’s no sense in try­ing to rein­vent the wheel. Nobody wants a link farm, though. Be select­ive in your ref­er­ences so that people don’t feel overwhelmed.
• And finally, keep it short and sweet. I’ve lis­ted a lot of points here, but if you tried to cover them all in one go you will end up with a speech/​document that is unac­cept­ably long or lack­ing in depth (like this one! ). Split them up, or struc­ture them so that the basic mes­sage is passed early on, with the rest being elaboration/​explanation.

We’ve got lots of good stuff to say about FOSS, but what mat­ters is not so much what we say but how we say it.

Those who remem­ber my ancient quest for the per­fect IRC solu­tion might be inter­ested in these posts by Aaron Toponce explain­ing how to couple a remote irssi ses­sion with GUI noti­fic­a­tion. I’m still quite happy with my cur­rent Bip + Xchat com­bin­a­tion, but I’ve always lus­ted after the 1337ness of irssi. Ice­cap looks intriguing, but my first instinct tells me that their solu­tion is over-​​engineered.

Note: If you see duplic­ated words in the above post, I am aware of them. Word­Press is doing some­thing funny and I can’t fig­ure out what it is. When I get the time I’ll upgrade to 2.5.

LotD: Ubuntu theme for Sym­bian S60v3 (works on my Nokia N95)

It can be amus­ing when news art­icles or blogs are writ­ten about a report/​study that has only been released or read in excerpt. Small snip­pets can be extremely con­tro­ver­sial on their own, and are eas­ily taken out of the con­text of the gestalt article.

Such has been the case with the announce­ment of the Standish Group’s report, titled ‘Trends in Open Source’. The report is avail­able in full to Standish sub­scribers, or for a fee of $US 1,000 per copy. Standish them­selves chose to drum-​​up pub­li­city in a press release two and a half weeks ago:

Open Source soft­ware is rais­ing havoc through­out the soft­ware mar­ket. It is the ulti­mate in dis­rupt­ive tech­no­logy, and while to it is only 6% of estim­ated tril­lion dol­lars IT budgeted annu­ally, it rep­res­ents a real loss of $60 bil­lion in annual rev­en­ues to soft­ware companies.

Some com­ment­at­ors pounced on this in defence of FOSS, and in doing so played right into Standish’s hands. A week later, other reports chose to focus on the tech­nical per­cep­tions of FOSS solu­tions, in par­tic­u­lar secur­ity. Some of these art­icles basic­ally said, “we haven’t been able to read the full report, but this is what we’ve been told”.

More informed accounts have hit the vir­tual presses in recent days, and it’s been revealed that the report is very pos­it­ive over­all with regards to FOSS. When iTnews asked me for com­ment, I was assured that the report had been thor­oughly read. I said a lot of things, but the quo­ta­tion that made the final cut is the following:

FOSS is inher­ently com­pat­ible with a free mar­ket, and hence with busi­ness. There is no closed-​​off ‘com­mand eco­nomy’ that is char­ac­ter­ised by pro­pri­et­ary soft­ware com­pan­ies. The soft­ware and its devel­op­ment are totally open to the world.

Fol­low­ing the inter­view, I tried to dis­til some key points about FOSS:

• The keys are trans­par­ency and account­ab­il­ity, as well as free­dom over your own inform­a­tion and inde­pend­ence from vendor lock-​​in.
• Most FOSS is based on open stand­ards, which means that users/​companies are not tying their data/​processes to one vendor or piece of soft­ware. Some might be wary of FOSS, but I don’t think any­one can argue against the mer­its of open standards.
• There is plenty of FOSS that works well on pro­pri­et­ary plat­forms (like Win­dows). There is no inher­ent tie-​​in with Linux.
• FOSS has been most suc­cess­ful where it isn’t noticed. This can be in embed­ded devices, or in pop­u­lar desktop applic­a­tions like Fire­fox and Open​Of​fice​.org.
• Most people might think of a ‘com­puter’ as a desktop com­puter, but most of ICT (and ICT growth) is actu­ally else­where (serv­ers, con­sumer elec­tron­ics, mobile phones, tele­coms, embed­ded, super­com­puters, etc.). Linux and FOSS is far more pop­u­lar in these fields.
• Most of the Inter­net is based on FOSS and open stand­ards built around FOSS. For instance, TCP/​IP net­work­ing was built for BSD UNIX (which is open source), and the major­ity of Web serv­ers run the open source Apache web server.

Obvi­ously there are more points than these, but I delib­er­ately kept this as a quick ‘off the top of my head’ exer­cise as a means of pre­vent­ing it from grow­ing into an encyc­lo­paedic tome.

LotD: Ubuntu theme for Windows