Comments on: Open Source and Free Culture’s Weakness is Marketing http://rejon.org/2006/09/open-source-and-free-cultures-weakness-is-marketing/ Jon Phillips is an artist and developer living in San Francisco and Beijing while growing Fabricatorz.com and "new" media projects. His notable involvements include Open Source and Free Culture movements, Inkscape, Open Clip Art Library, and building community + bizdev for Creative Commons. Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:12:19 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Rob Myers http://rejon.org/2006/09/open-source-and-free-cultures-weakness-is-marketing/comment-page-1/#comment-1469 Rob Myers Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:51:20 +0000 http://rejon.org/?p=417#comment-1469 After the Bzzzagents discussion some of us worked on a "SpreadCC" page on the CC wiki. I reformatted it into a section of themed pages and - then it died. It's not on the CC Wiki now, or at archive.org, but perhaps someone at CC has a backup? There were some good ideas in there even if I do say so myself. ;-) The index URL was: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/SpreadCC After the Bzzzagents discussion some of us worked on a “SpreadCC” page on the CC wiki. I reformatted it into a section of themed pages and – then it died. It’s not on the CC Wiki now, or at archive.org, but perhaps someone at CC has a backup? There were some good ideas in there even if I do say so myself. ;-)

The index URL was: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/SpreadCC

]]> By: Mike Linksvayer http://rejon.org/2006/09/open-source-and-free-cultures-weakness-is-marketing/comment-page-1/#comment-1367 Mike Linksvayer Sun, 24 Sep 2006 03:28:15 +0000 http://rejon.org/?p=417#comment-1367 Your four bullets of advice are all right on (but point two is missing a wiki! :-)) but I'm not sure why marketing should be singled out as good's (my abbreviation for open source and free culture) weakness. And Rudd-o's suggestion seems to amount to handing out CDs to friends -- the guerilla version of AOL's carpet bombing, but neither is very compelling. In my opinion if one can't code the best thing one can do is to become an expert user, so that when someone amenable to using open source has a quality helping hand. Handing out software that people have no support network for (unless the software is nearly flawless, as software goes anyway, like Firefox) is just the open source version of the hard sell, not useful to nor appreciated by anyone. Finally, what proof is there that SFF works majorly well? The website gets <a href="http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=max&size=medium&compare_sites=%20mozilla.org&y=r&url=spreadfirefox.com#top" rel="nofollow">a dribble of traffic compared to mozilla.org</a>. The website looks really nice and there's lots of <a href="http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/25174" rel="nofollow">chatter</a>, but ... I'm probably just being too skeptical. None of this may apply to Free Culture, the culture of which remains pretty mysterious to me. The stuff about support networks is much weaker for culture, certainly, though I think the analogue to being an expert user is being an expert in the free culture offerings available in some genre, so that your recommendations are good and trusted. Anyone want some libre avant-noise music recommendations? I'm working on that tiny niche. :) Your four bullets of advice are all right on (but point two is missing a wiki! :-) ) but I’m not sure why marketing should be singled out as good’s (my abbreviation for open source and free culture) weakness. And Rudd-o’s suggestion seems to amount to handing out CDs to friends — the guerilla version of AOL’s carpet bombing, but neither is very compelling.

In my opinion if one can’t code the best thing one can do is to become an expert user, so that when someone amenable to using open source has a quality helping hand. Handing out software that people have no support network for (unless the software is nearly flawless, as software goes anyway, like Firefox) is just the open source version of the hard sell, not useful to nor appreciated by anyone.

Finally, what proof is there that SFF works majorly well? The website gets a dribble of traffic compared to mozilla.org. The website looks really nice and there’s lots of chatter, but … I’m probably just being too skeptical.

None of this may apply to Free Culture, the culture of which remains pretty mysterious to me. The stuff about support networks is much weaker for culture, certainly, though I think the analogue to being an expert user is being an expert in the free culture offerings available in some genre, so that your recommendations are good and trusted. Anyone want some libre avant-noise music recommendations? I’m working on that tiny niche. :)

]]> By: Open Source massive unification « Webcitizen FelipeC http://rejon.org/2006/09/open-source-and-free-cultures-weakness-is-marketing/comment-page-1/#comment-1361 Open Source massive unification « Webcitizen FelipeC Sat, 23 Sep 2006 07:47:06 +0000 http://rejon.org/?p=417#comment-1361 [...] Jon Phillips stated a great idea on his blog, create some sort of effort to unify ideas about what is to be done in the Open Source world. [...] [...] Jon Phillips stated a great idea on his blog, create some sort of effort to unify ideas about what is to be done in the Open Source world. [...]

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