Debian is unknown / Debian could help Sun OpenJDK
Hello,
The Debian Project needs to communicate better to outsiders (users,
potential developers, potential upstream, press).
The recent efforts of debian-publicity are giving _some_ results and
need more help.
The dpl announcement was written in a hurry because other media were
already poping before we could issue a PR and we need to take the lead
at this [0].
Could someone contact again [12] Steve for a few words after the
election results?
The DPL announcement [11] was a reasonable place to write something
about Project's organization and politics.
The election IS a key event to project's governance.
This "Debian governance" subject has sparked a lot of *GOOD* interest
[1], [2], and at the cited links of PressCoverage [3].
It has been some time that Debian politics received GOOD interest.
Maybe, Debian experience could even help Sun's OpenJDK [4].
"Fascinating", as Mr. Spock used to say.
For outsiders, Debian Project is seen as a Pandora's box of anarchic
flamewars, elitist, too conservative, boring, bureaucratic and slow
paced.
Please, actually READ the comments at [1] as I did (there are some from
me there), and you will see many of those misconceptions.
Also, the perennial "Debian is old X Ubuntu is cool" debate.
Even journalists do not know Debian Project.
The "about Debian Project" section was crafted for weeks to address some
of the more common and recurring target points from those and to
"invite" new developers, contributors and sponsors, leveraging previous
texts from Joey and many others.
If I had to print a Debian Project folder, would include this short text
with the links.
Since started including it at texts, there has been some "peace" from
journalists.
They simply did not know. We had showed some data to them.
The section tries to show some key differentiators and strenght points,
full of links to further and detailed information for those interested.
**Word for word**, try to compare it against Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva,
or any other commercial or libre distro.
Is OUR fault that Debian is (still) unknown.
Blaming others will not solve the problem.
This debian-publicity team is in charge to tackle the problem.
We must abandon the "field of dreams" approach and try to spread the
word as far as we could. Ubuntu has a long head start [5], as well as
OpenOffice.org [6]. Gnome, too [8]. Fedora is already moving [7].
Debian Project is great and we are proud of it and committed to it.
Let the world discover WHY.
Regards [9], [10].
Andre Felipe
[0] http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2008041300726NWCYDB
[1] http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/14/1349202
[2] http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2008041501226NWDBMR
[3] http://wiki.debian.org/News
[4] http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/links_for_2008_04_15
[5] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam
[6] http://marketing.openoffice.org/
[7] http://lwn.net/Articles/269815/
[8] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing
[9] http://wiki.debian.org/WhyDebianForDevelopers
[10] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianForNonCoderContributors
[11] http://times.debian.net/1232
[12] http://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2008/04/msg00035.html
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