Marketing free software

Posted by amaneiro on February 20, 2009

The first thing I did when I started to work here, was reading some articles about marketing free software. There is a lot of information and books about marketing, there is also a few things wrote about free software, but there is not many stuff about marketing and free software.

But, anyway, I found two interesting articles, which gave me a better sight about our company and the environment we work in:

This process led me to write some conclusions down (in Spanish language):

Lately, there was another interesting event: the creation of initmarketing company, by Sandro Groganz and others. It’s quite interesting to me mainly because of one initiative they launched: InitMarketing.tv.

During last months, they were publishing some interesting interviews with relevant people on free software arena, as for example, an interview with Stormy Peters, the executive director of GNOME Foundation (which I strongly recommend you):

Some free software projects started to care about marketing some years ago, but it’s a hard task to do yet, because the way they are led: towards the community instead hierarchical structures. That special condition converts the act of marketer a free software project or company a quite different (and exciting) task. You have to know how the community works to be effective in your commitment and avoid misunderstandings. As John Williams said:

Marketing is not about convincing people to buy (or use) your product or service. That is selling. Marketing is about matching the output of your organization to the demands of the (chosen) market. Put another way, marketing is about finding out what people want, and then giving it to them.

For that, I’m pretty sure that learning about community management is a worthy task for anyone who wants to be involved in free software projects.

In the beginnig was …

Posted by amaneiro on February 06, 2009

… the command line. And because the title of this post is trying to be a tribute to Stephenson’s book, I’m posting from the command line 🙂 (thanks to Stuart Rackhan).

I’d like to start this blog by introducing me briefly:

  • I’m a begginer speaking english; so, I apologize for my poor language and faults in advance.
  • My work in Igalia is related to marketing stuff, but I’m not a marketer (from an academic point of view).
  • This is the third blog I started.

The first one was the stage where I was trying to learn about information society and intellectual property issues. I wrote it in galician language, but it’s almost died. The second one is almost alive and it’s the place where I try to make my mind clear about how free sw methologies and practices work, and if other information industries can to learn from this world.

Write the ideas down, help me to clear them.

Last, but not least… here, I will try to post my thoughs and other stuff related to my work inside Igalia. Obviously, they will be only my thoughs, not the Igalia’s ones. Stay tuned 🙂