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Posted to dev@httpd.apache.org by "Wayne S. Frazee" <wf...@wynweb.net> on 2005/03/01 21:05:30 UTC
Actively Promoting Apache 2
I entreat each potential responder to this email to please read it all the
way through and THEN respond rather than knee-jerk something based on only
the first paragraph or two...
As I sat reading the responses to the new development thread on acceptance
of Apache 2 and some users' regression to 1.3, it struck me when someone
mentioned that they believed part of the problem to be marketing. Mozilla
advertised firefox with a large one-time investment into a celebratory ad
denoting the release of Firefox 1... why not build a similar effort in the
Apache community to promote support and upgrade to Apache 2?
Use the web-media and the advertising avenues in many high-traffic sites
dealing specifically with web development, web hosting, ISP hosting, et al.
Launch limited time and expense ad campaigns using media provided and
"approved" by the community. Use funding from a community Apache Promotion
drive.
I was thinking something like this:
1) Launch fundraising / contest website for Apache 2.x ad blitz promotion.
2) Announce contest to have your flash ad featured on websites around the
web in the Apache 2 Promotion ad campaign. Vehicle to submit ad, et al.
3) Announce fundraising effort to support above-mentioned ad with funds
being specifically earmarked for this effort. If the effort is done by
someone or a group of someones in the community, accounting needs to be very
transparent and availible for public view in terms of limited statistics on
the fundraising status. Donators who wish may have thier names or
pseudo-names credited to a list of donators, sorted by contribution size or
something of that nature?
4) At the end of the flash ad submission period, contest judges from the
apache community select the editors top 5 or whatever for each ad format.
For an announced period of time, the community at large is welcome to vote
for thier favorite among the ads in essentially a web poll.
5) Following ad selection, collected funds are assessed, donations are no
longer accepted, and a panel of whoever is working on the effort assesses
the best ad channels and the panel comes to an agreement on the allocation
of specific fund segments to various ad campaigns that are deemed to be the
most effective channel for the selected ads.
6) Ad campaigns are run until budget is met, project over.
Benefits:
High visiblility from tech news organizations covering the drive, similar to
the mozilla projects' fundraiser.
Targeted advertisements for the apache 2 project with a credits page for
each selected ad awarded to the contest winner(s).
The message of upgrade to apache 2 is out there, hopefully with good,
professional-looking ads contributed by the community, et al.
Challenges:
Numerous, I am sure.
Looking for feedback, legal, devils advocate, et al on the concept, if not
the execution.
-----------------
Wayne S. Frazee
"Any sufficiently developed bug is indistinguishable from a feature."
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by Bill Stoddard <bi...@wstoddard.com>.
Paul Querna wrote:
> André Malo wrote:
>
>> I personally believe, that there is actually no problem to solve.
>> While we are free to write the software we like, people are free to
>> use the software they like. I have no desire to "force" someone to use
>> either version.
>> But that's my very humble opinion ;-)
+1
>
>
> Marketing isn't about force, it is about brainwashing.
>
+1 :)
It makes me happy to have people use software I help develop and I'll gladly comments and constructive
criticisms. Beyond that, Apache 2 can sell itself (or not) on its merits.
Bill
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by Paul Querna <ch...@force-elite.com>.
André Malo wrote:
> I personally believe, that there is actually no problem to solve. While we
> are free to write the software we like, people are free to use the software
> they like. I have no desire to "force" someone to use either version.
> But that's my very humble opinion ;-)
Marketing isn't about force, it is about brainwashing.
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by André Malo <nd...@perlig.de>.
* Wayne S. Frazee wrote:
> As I sat reading the responses to the new development thread on
> acceptance of Apache 2 and some users' regression to 1.3, it struck me
> when someone mentioned that they believed part of the problem to be
> marketing. Mozilla advertised firefox with a large one-time investment
> into a celebratory ad denoting the release of Firefox 1... why not build
> a similar effort in the Apache community to promote support and upgrade
> to Apache 2?
I personally believe, that there is actually no problem to solve. While we
are free to write the software we like, people are free to use the software
they like. I have no desire to "force" someone to use either version.
But that's my very humble opinion ;-)
nd
--
"Solides und umfangreiches Buch"
-- aus einer Rezension
<http://pub.perlig.de/books.html#apache2>
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by "William A. Rowe, Jr." <wr...@rowe-clan.net>.
At 03:30 PM 3/1/2005, Ian Holsman wrote:
>The biggest hurdle 2.0 has had to face IMO is:
>- 1.3 isn't broken
>- we run 1.3 already
>- module XYZ only runs on 1.3
>- 2.0 doesn't do anything that 1.3 doesn't do anyway
>
>What I would suggest for your marketing campaign would be to write and submit several technical articles about apache2 and how its new features and speed can help you save money, reduce administration time, and enable a whole heap of new features from already written modules which you would have had to custom develop yourself in 1.3.
++1. Advocacy is key. Marketing is (to this group of 'consumers')
simply noise.
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by Bojan Smojver <bo...@rexursive.com>.
Quoting Paul Querna <ch...@force-elite.com>:
> There are not many left now.... Just those mod_perl guys, and they are
> at 1.99.99999.
He, he, nice try :-) It's actually 2.0.0-RC4.
http://perl.apache.org/download/index.html
--
Bojan
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by Geoffrey Young <ge...@modperlcookbook.org>.
Paul Querna wrote:
> Ian Holsman wrote:
>
>> Also I would start discussing with some of the other 1.3-only module
>> writers out there on how to port their stuff to 2.0, or port it for them.
>
>
> There are not many left now.... Just those mod_perl guys, and they are
> at 1.99.99999.
I think you left off a few significant digits there.
;)
--Geoff
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by Paul Querna <ch...@force-elite.com>.
Ian Holsman wrote:
> Also I would start discussing with some of the other 1.3-only module
> writers out there on how to port their stuff to 2.0, or port it for them.
There are not many left now.... Just those mod_perl guys, and they are
at 1.99.99999. Are there any other modules you were thinking of?
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by "Wayne S. Frazee" <wf...@wynweb.net>.
Ian Holsman writes:
>
> Also I would start discussing with some of the other 1.3-only module
> writers out there on how to port their stuff to 2.0, or port it for them.
>
Ian, your note on apache promotion via whitepaper is well taken. Is anyone
aware of existing papers on the subject (specifically, advantages to using
apache 2.0 over 1.3)?
Two things:
1) mod_perl 2.0 - Impact assessement on end-user and server-administrator
upgrades to 2.x?
2) The whole PHP issue. At this point, is having the full support of the
PHP development community a serious component in 2.x migrations? I know i
run several 2.x servers (prefork on single-CPU and a couple of dual-CPU
entry level servers) for commercial companies which use PHP-based
applications. How much PHP functionality is missing with apache 2?
Thread-safe application support only?
And then, solicting opinion:
How close is 2.1 to its first production GA release? I realize that we are
just now talking promotion to beta but taking a wild guestimate based on
past knowledge of release promotion timeframes....
On a 1 to 5 scale, how important is the 2.1 release over 2.0? What specific
major feature upgrades does 2.1 provide that you cant do with availible 2.0
and modules?
-----------------
Wayne S. Frazee
"Any sufficiently developed bug is indistinguishable from a feature."
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by Ian Holsman <Ia...@apache.org>.
The biggest hurdle 2.0 has had to face IMO is:
- 1.3 isn't broken
- we run 1.3 already
- module XYZ only runs on 1.3
- 2.0 doesn't do anything that 1.3 doesn't do anyway
What I would suggest for your marketing campaign would be to write and
submit several technical articles about apache2 and how its new features
and speed can help you save money, reduce administration time, and
enable a whole heap of new features from already written modules which
you would have had to custom develop yourself in 1.3.
Also I would start discussing with some of the other 1.3-only module
writers out there on how to port their stuff to 2.0, or port it for them.
Marketing is about knowing your customers, and servicing their needs. It
is not about selling products or brainwashing ;-)
--Ian
Wayne S. Frazee wrote:
> I entreat each potential responder to this email to please read it all
> the way through and THEN respond rather than knee-jerk something based
> on only the first paragraph or two...
> As I sat reading the responses to the new development thread on
> acceptance of Apache 2 and some users' regression to 1.3, it struck me
> when someone mentioned that they believed part of the problem to be
> marketing. Mozilla advertised firefox with a large one-time investment
> into a celebratory ad denoting the release of Firefox 1... why not build
> a similar effort in the Apache community to promote support and upgrade
> to Apache 2?
> Use the web-media and the advertising avenues in many high-traffic sites
> dealing specifically with web development, web hosting, ISP hosting, et
> al. Launch limited time and expense ad campaigns using media provided
> and "approved" by the community. Use funding from a community Apache
> Promotion drive.
> I was thinking something like this:
> 1) Launch fundraising / contest website for Apache 2.x ad blitz promotion.
> 2) Announce contest to have your flash ad featured on websites around
> the web in the Apache 2 Promotion ad campaign. Vehicle to submit ad, et
> al.
> 3) Announce fundraising effort to support above-mentioned ad with funds
> being specifically earmarked for this effort. If the effort is done by
> someone or a group of someones in the community, accounting needs to be
> very transparent and availible for public view in terms of limited
> statistics on the fundraising status. Donators who wish may have thier
> names or pseudo-names credited to a list of donators, sorted by
> contribution size or something of that nature?
> 4) At the end of the flash ad submission period, contest judges from the
> apache community select the editors top 5 or whatever for each ad
> format. For an announced period of time, the community at large is
> welcome to vote for thier favorite among the ads in essentially a web poll.
> 5) Following ad selection, collected funds are assessed, donations are
> no longer accepted, and a panel of whoever is working on the effort
> assesses the best ad channels and the panel comes to an agreement on the
> allocation of specific fund segments to various ad campaigns that are
> deemed to be the most effective channel for the selected ads.
> 6) Ad campaigns are run until budget is met, project over.
> Benefits:
> High visiblility from tech news organizations covering the drive,
> similar to the mozilla projects' fundraiser.
> Targeted advertisements for the apache 2 project with a credits page for
> each selected ad awarded to the contest winner(s).
> The message of upgrade to apache 2 is out there, hopefully with good,
> professional-looking ads contributed by the community, et al.
> Challenges:
> Numerous, I am sure.
> Looking for feedback, legal, devils advocate, et al on the concept, if
> not the execution.
> -----------------
> Wayne S. Frazee
> "Any sufficiently developed bug is indistinguishable from a feature."
>
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by Colm MacCarthaigh <co...@stdlib.net>.
On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 08:05:30PM +0000, Wayne S. Frazee wrote:
> Looking for feedback, legal, devils advocate, et al on the concept, if not
> the execution.
I don't think professional, competent Webserver administrators generally
respond well to marketing. In my experience, they (we!) prefer a mix of
technical conservatism and solid real-world testing.
A webserver isn't really that flashy, it's not something that you
interact with all that much outside of the externally indiscernable
ordinary web-usage. Is it really going to benefit from branding,
marketing and so on?
If increasing the usage of Apache 2.0 is a core goal (and I don't really
see why it should be), the quickest easiest way to do it would be to
give it a clicky, checkboxy GUI that the lazy 99% would use just because
it's there, or have it come with a GUI web-interface out of the box.
*shudder*
--
Colm MacCárthaigh Public Key: colm+pgp@stdlib.net
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by Dirk-Willem van Gulik <di...@webweaving.org>.
On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Graham Leggett wrote:
> Perhaps another plan is to add a section giving real reasons why to
> upgrade to Apache 2, and potentially publicise that. "We have MPMs" means
> nothing to the webmaster. "Apache 2 can run XXX% faster under Solaris
> using worker" is far more useful information.
I think this happens by itself - slowly but surely I find that for new
sites; or olds sites you are revisting, we are getting to that point where
it is cheaper to migrate to 2.0 than to keep 1.3 patched up with little
hacks to do MPM like things, special auths, clever proxy/pipelines and
what not - which is in 2.0 in some for by default. Just give it another
one or two years and you simply take a 2.x naturally.
Why push - gravity eventually wins.
Dw.
Re: Actively Promoting Apache 2
Posted by Graham Leggett <mi...@sharp.fm>.
Wayne S. Frazee said:
> As I sat reading the responses to the new development thread on acceptance
> of Apache 2 and some users' regression to 1.3, it struck me when someone
> mentioned that they believed part of the problem to be marketing. Mozilla
> advertised firefox with a large one-time investment into a celebratory ad
> denoting the release of Firefox 1... why not build a similar effort in the
> Apache community to promote support and upgrade to Apache 2?
Firefox's target market is the ordinary computer use in the street, and
their campaign delivered the message "there is an alternative" to a large
group of people who had no idea an alternative existed.
Httpd's audience is far more technical, and an upgrade is done for far
more complex reasons.
Perhaps another plan is to add a section giving real reasons why to
upgrade to Apache 2, and potentially publicise that. "We have MPMs" means
nothing to the webmaster. "Apache 2 can run XXX% faster under Solaris
using worker" is far more useful information.
> Looking for feedback, legal, devils advocate, et al on the concept, if not
> the execution.
Just to prove I read it to the end :)
Regards,
Graham
--