Re: You *CAN'T* adapt policies to a standard distro

Post #68,822 by deSitter 12/13/02 11:01:58 PM Reply	Re: You CAN'T adapt policies to a standard distro Commercial Linux distributions are too young to have been ruined by marketing droids. I don't understand all this drama. A policy is a policy. What's next? A XML based distribution? OH SHIT! It's already here. -drl
Post #68,825 by ben_tilly 12/13/02 11:09:26 PM Reply	Um, Ross...? Red Hat was founded by a marketing droid. If you are trying to make money, and you are still alive, then you have marketers and they have a say in how your product works. That is life. Cheers, Ben "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]
Post #68,834 by deSitter 12/13/02 11:55:34 PM Reply	Re: Um, Ross...? There is nothing wrong with marketing as long as it is done with Starbuckian restraint. -drl
Post #68,847 by ben_tilly 12/14/02 12:35:24 AM Reply	So marketing is OK if it is effective? "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]
Post #68,870 by deSitter 12/14/02 10:45:11 AM Reply	Re: So marketing is OK if it is effective? No, marketing is OK if it is not coercive and if it is done to trumpet a fine product that many people have worked very hard to make - in other words, when it is not an end in itself. -drl
Post #68,885 by ben_tilly 12/14/02 12:42:50 PM Reply	Um...marketing is _part_ of the production process I suspect that you believe that marketing is something that starts after the product is done and is ready to ship. It ain't that simple. In any healthy company one of the primary roles of marketing is to get feedback about what existing and potential customers want, and then to take that back to the company and get that done. Any company whose marketing department cannot carry out this role either is a monopoly or is not long for the world. Having marketing serve that role is not coercive. It is something other than trumpeting a fine product that many people have worked very hard to make. It is also a role that by its nature has little regard for the internals of how the products work and what the consequences are of satisfying every customer whim. This is true not just even of, but especially of well-done marketing. That is the role that I was talking about above. That role immediately puts marketing into direct conflict with any kind of internal policy on things like release guidelines, testing, scheduling, and so on. It is not that marketing actively wishes to compromise these things, it is that they represent interests whose desires and needs do not take them into account. And in any healthy company both points of view have to be balanced, sometimes with one winning and sometimes with the other. The compromises may be small - particularly if the desired marketing message is closely aligned with technical implementation - but they are always present. Whether it is shipping a broken compiler, or going with a popular packaging format because it is what everyone else uses. In Debian the marketing point of view is only present to the extent that core developers are themselves customers and so feel the customers' pain. The result - for good and bad - is that policy can be taken to lengths that would never be possible in a company that has to worry about the fact that customers are getting ticked off and going elsewhere. Use it for a while and you will see this in spades. Or go out and listen to complaints from users - almost inevitably they are a result of the effort that it takes to follow policy. About this topic I won't speak more until and unless you actually try Debian and have the opportunity to see for yourself the advantages and disadvantages that come from not compromising on well thought-out policy for expediency. After you have that experience, then we can talk about whether any for-profit company that tried to hold such a rigid line could possibly survive long enough to see the benefits. (My opinion is that it could not - just as Debian could not if it had to pay for the time that it takes to implement it.) But I will say one thing about another topic. Starbucks has extremely effective marketing. This is both good and bad. Some random links for you: [link\|http://www.thestranger.com/2001-10-11/city4.html\|http://www.thestrang...-10-11/city4.html] [link\|http://www.jhu.edu/~newslett/02-3-00/Opinions/6.html\|http://www.jhu.edu/~...0/Opinions/6.html] [link\|http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/comments/Starbucks.htm\|http://www.monochrom...nts/Starbucks.htm] [link\|http://www.sallys-place.com/beverages/coffee/big_s.htm\|http://www.sallys-pl.../coffee/big_s.htm] My summary? They have figured out how to overcharge for an OK product. And they overcharge as much as they can, as often as they can. Their marketing is aggressive, but generally well enough done that it doesn't overtly look like marketing. So people don't mind... Cheers, Ben "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]
Post #68,898 by deSitter 12/14/02 2:37:45 PM Reply	Re: Um...marketing is _part_ of the production process Heh - "Starbuckian" meant Starbuck in Moby Dick! He is the moral foil to Ahab's monomania and obession with revenge. His moral compass is "everything in moderation". So I meant about marketing - when it is for the purpose of promoting a good product that employs good people who do good work, then it's acceptable and even A Good Thing. When it is done to lock down markets and proselytize a self-obsessed viewpoint (think Microsoft) then it is not acceptable and An Evil Thing. -drl
Post #68,900 by mmoffitt 12/14/02 2:43:29 PM Reply	Sorry to interject, but there's something important here. I'll abstain from the content of the dispute here, but I just wanted to make note of something important going on here that has not happened in the personal computer market for quite some time. The dispute here is largely about "which distro is best?" The fact that such a discussion could occur at all in the face of a monopoly is encouraging. Carry on, Mikem
Post #68,908 by deSitter 12/14/02 7:03:20 PM Reply	Re: Sorry to interject, but there's something important... Well, its vital to package it correctly, as a competitor to Windows on all fronts. It's also a competitor to UNIX. That is damn good credibility. This point was passed I'd say about 6 months after IBM painted penguins all over New York. -drl
Post #68,901 by ben_tilly 12/14/02 3:10:35 PM Reply	Call that a "missed reference" then. :-) "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]

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