debian advocacy suggestions, anyone?

[Robert Lemmen <robertle@semistable.com>]

hi folks,

sorry for crossposting this to debian-project but a quick look at the
archive showed that the signal/noise ratio in debian-publicity, where
this mail should go to, is 0. sad btw.

i am currently working in vietnam, and me and some people here want to
start a bit of a linux advocacy campaign because open software is really
not very popular here.

it would be two parts actually, one series of linux flyers targeted at
anyone with a computer, and a debian-specific flyer for people in the it
business or people who have already been exposed to unix-like systems
before, and should show debians benefits relative to other linux
distributions.

we did a bit of brainstorming and came up with the following outline,
and if anyone of you has additional ideas or comments i would be more
than happy to hear them.

DEBIAN FLYER OUTLINE
--------------------
- slogan/title
  "debian gnu/linux -- the universal operating system"
  /* this is an semi-official slogan and should not be translated but
   * rather be kept in english */
- some basic facts about debian
  /* this should be a bit of history, the realtion to the fsf, the dfsg,
   * the social contract, and a bit about debian as an organization.
   * also show off with the number of supported architectures and the
   * number of developers here */

/* a list of reasons that speak for debian, also in contrast to other
 * distributions */
- truly free
  /* not a comemrcial vendor, everything gets pushed upstream, comitted
   * to free software, transparency */
- massive package base
  /* show off with the numbers, state trends */
- stable, maintained
  /* we don't only pack the software, we maintain it. some packages
   * differ much from the upstream sources. we prefer proven stable
   * versions over cutting-edge features */
- package management system
  /* we have a very sophisticated package management system, in-place
   * upgrades, proper dependency tracking, server restarts on upgrade,
   * automated checks for packages */
- security
  /* we have a very competent security team, packages with security
   * flaws can easily be replaced, most of our users and developers are
   * extremly security-sensitive so this has a very high priority */
- one "downside"
  /* we take the point that most people criticize about debian and make
   * it useless as an argument here. not such a "nice" setup and the
   * like. but we are working on it, and most people install it only
   * once anyway because after that everything works ^-^ */

- pointers
  /* debian.org, docs section, debianhelp */


thanks  robert