http://opensourceparking.com/

[Evan Leibovitch]

Christopher Browne wrote:

>> In my view, MS has changed their marketing. I think they have saturated
>> print media and are looking to combat Open Source in any way that they
>> can. How does one stop a grass roots competitor? Perhaps this is
>> unprecedented in marketing. That would explain the sponsorship of MS
>> only user groups, the free events that MS is sponsoring and the
>> Microsoft Across America truck
>> (http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/acrossamerica/).
>>
>> They spend an absurd amount of money on marketing and are probably down
>> to using unorthodox methods.
>
>
> And "unorthodox" can, on occasion, be the "ground-breaking orthodoxy
> of the future," but, more often, it's 'heretical' because it's
> downright wrong, and, in this context, represents marketing methods
> that we will ultimately discover don't work.


I wouldn't dismiss these tactics so fast.

Arguably, inertia is as large an obstacle to open source adoption as any 
technical issue. Managers and other IT workers who are increasingly 
threatened by open source are themselves looking for more support, and 
would be IMO good targets to join their own kind of grassroots advocacy 
networks. It may be defencive advocacy, but it is advocacy nonetheless.

Novell learned long ago the value of building up a grassroots, 
vendor-centric grassroots network (right, Rick? ;-) ). The global 
development of NUI is inarguably a significant factor in Novell's 
popularity and customer loyalty long surviving the technical 
obsolescence of NetWare. Now Microsoft is trying to cultivate loyalty in 
the same manner, as a rearguard action. This may be as much a matter of 
political-support gathering as technical-support sharing; I would keep 
an eye on these groups.

As for free events, Microsoft certainly doesn't have a lock on that: 
http://blogs.redhat.com/worldtour/
Though obviously they have more to spend on such things.

Anyway, don't Maddog's travels constitute a ongoing, dozen-year-long 
"Linux World Tour" of sorts?

- Evan

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