On 16 July 2017 at 10:10, Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sun, Jul 16, 2017 at 01:29:01PM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote: >> umbrella? It may as well come directly from upstream at that point. The >> whole point of delivering software under the Fedora umbrella is to deliver >> it as RPMs. If there is no RPM, delivering through Fedora is completely >> useless. > > I strongly dispute the idea that Fedora must be tied to a particular > packaging technology. > I am going to agree with Kevin on this from clasical brand management point of view. Fedora Linux sits on a 20+ year lifetime of being an RPM based Linux Operating System. If you ask people about Fedora both inside and outside about the community what is Fedora, they are going to call it an RPM based Linux technology much more likely than they will think about the Four Foundations or anything else. People have chosen or rejected Fedora for years over RPM vs Deb or Pacman or anything else. RPM is part and parcel of what makes Fedora for most people. To put this in a similar real life analogy... someone says Harley Davidson, you think motorcycle with a specific oversized engine. At one point they looked at trying to break into some lighter motorcycle markets and also the car market. The problem was that a) potential customers could not envision a small Harley or a car Harley and b) existing customers felt the company was selling out. And when Harley has made such vehicles, they never get into the market beyond a "here is our token light motorcycle". Now it isn't impossible to change images, but it is going to be a long slow ride. We aren't talking ocean liner or container ship turning radius. We are talking giant iceberg turning radius because most of the identity is deep down inside where you can't see it. It is going to break up the iceberg into various bits and it is going to be messy and painful. It isn't something that can be done in 2-3 releases because we aren't talking code, we are talking about deep rooted human clan identity. [The fact that I am agreeing with Kevin Kofler should be a signal.] These sorts of deep brand issues are why most companies start new brands which might look like they are competing with their primary one. It can showcase some new identity and get people to see it as useful or better than what they have already. It can also show where things aren't going to work at all because people just aren't interested in something. The Soap industry is a classic study in brands where most people buy things because of something they tie to the brand be it a logo, a smell, a look or even just the container it comes in. Whenever the company changes those things, it causes significant drop in sales and they are usually going back to what they had. So instead a soap company will just start a new line with whatever is different they want to see. No tie in with the original soap. Sometimes that soap takes over and other times it just sits there and goes away after 8 months. > -- > Matthew Miller > <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Fedora Project Leader > _______________________________________________ > devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- Stephen J Smoogen. _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
