Matthew Revell

There are five broad types of marketer in the open source world:

• Town criers: shout loudly but not always clearly, don’t listen, make a big noise but actually only reach a tiny number of people.
• Frustrated philosophers: so interested in the academic niceties of marketing that they mostly fail to communicate with anyone.
• Secondary practitioners: they fell into marketing-like practices by doing something else and probably wouldn’t think of what they do as marketing.
• Professional visitors: one of the small but growing group of professional marketers employed by open source software companies, for whom open source is just another job. Further divided into those that engage with the community and those that don’t.
• The people that get it: they know the difference between free software and open source, they’re a part of the community and they know marketing.

I reckon professional visitors and town criers will be the two groups that grow fastest over the next year. Increased commercialisation of open source will feed the professional visitors. Increased interest in open source by non-coders will add to the town criers.

There’s nothing wrong with the people in either group; we just need to help them become the people that get it. We should take the lead by engaging the professional visitors. We should establish a marketing meritocracy and learning path to help the town criers become more effective.

I’m sitting in Shannon airport, overlooking the marsh lands at the edge of the river Shannon, having spent the past few days at SkyCon, in Limerick.

Jono, Stuart and I were here to talk on our various areas of interest, and grabbed the opportunity to record an episode of LugRadio. We interviewed some cool people and the show will be out next Monday, as usual.

My talk was about translating using Launchpad. Ireland is one Europe’s most important centres for localisation and it was astounding just how many people I met that are involved in either software translation or documentation.

On my first day at SkyCon, I met up with Noirin, who works as a technical author and uses Launchpad’s Translations for her work on free software projects. Her enthusiasm for Launchpad was great.

“I love Launchpad,” she told me.

Launchpad’s Translations does exactly what she needs and makes it easy.

Noirin confirmed my belief that we’re on the cusp of a new wave of people in the free software community who aren’t coders but who care about software freedom and can plug many of the skills gaps in the community.

Launchpad works for Noirin because it lets her concentrate on one thing: being a translator. She doesn’t have to care about po files or even know that GetText exists.

We need to find ways that enable non-coders – like me – to get the most from the time they have to spend on software projects. Whether it’s a service/software like Launchpad, or a community like SpreadFirefox, I can’t wait to see how our community is going to make the most of the skills that the rest of the world has to offer.

I’m heading over to Limerick, this weekend, for SkyCon.

It looks as though it’s going to be a really cool event, sharing much the same spirit as LugRadio Live. The programme of speakers is nicely varied, with hardcore FOSS geekery through to talks on the social implications of technology.

I’ll be speaking, on Launchpad, at 11am on Sunday. Jono and Stuart are coming too, so we’ll be covering the whole thing for LugRadio too. Sadly, our bald bald friend can’t make it, so it looks as though we now have a tradition of only three of us attending foreign events.
If you’re in Ireland, or anywhere near an airport that’ll get you to Shannon, scrap your plans for the weekend and get over to Limerick. I’m seriously impressed by how well organised SkyCon has been, from a speaker’s perspective, so I’m sure the actual event’s going to be fantastic.

It’d be great to hook up with anyone that wants to chat about Launchpad and Bazaar. Email/grab me on irc (mrevell in #launchpad) if you want to arrange a particular time.

The LugRadio Live 2007 venue is booked and we’re now organising everything to make it’s the best yet!

The details:

• Dates: 7 and 8 July 2007.
• Venue: Light House Media Centre, Chubb Building, Fryer Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1HT.
• Purpose: social gathering of the open source community, with talks, exhibition, BoFs and beer.

We’re organising speakers, exhibitors and all that right now. If you want to speak or exhibit at LugRadio Live, email show AT lugradio DOT org. Tell us:

• Your name and email address.
• Talk title or exhibition stand purpose.
• Short abstract of your talk or description of how LRL visitors will benefit from your stand.
• Type of talk – main stage or lightning – or type of stand – commercial or community (we want to maintain a balance).

We’re looking for talks and exhibitors that people will still remember in a year’s time. That doesn’t mean you have to demo eye candy whilst doing back-flips – although we’d love to have you back Mirco.

The venue this year is by far and away the best yet. Housed in the original home of Chubb lockmakers, The Light House Media Centre features two cinemas, a cafe, a bar and a massive glass-roofed atrium. There’s also a public art gallery, which you’ll be able to enjoy between talks. Importantly, it is right next to the train station.

So, clear that weekend in your diary. We’ll announce the official hotels very soon!

A warning: it appears that my Canonical email address has been spoofed.

If you receive an email that appears to be from me and has an attachment you’re not expecting or that looks dodgy, please delete it.

If you’re unsure, find me on irc – mrevell on irc.freenode.net.

I’m over in Amsterdam for the Bazaar NL sprint.

While we’ve got some of the Bazaar guys together, it’s a great opportunity to answer your questions about Bazaar and to find out how you’re using it.
So, mail me (matthew DOT revell at my employer.com) or ping me in #bzr on irc.freenode.net, with:

• your questions about Bazaar
• things you liked to see added to or changed in Bazaar
• ways you’ve used Bazaar.

Look forward to hearing from you!

Next year, you’re going to be seeing some pretty cool stuff from Launchpad. The bosses have got us locked in a basement over Christmas just to make sure.

In the new year, though, we’re trying something different for one day a week: Fix-it Fridays. Each developer will work on whatever they want to see improved in Launchpad.

Now, if you’re a Launchpad user and you’ve got ideas or feedback for Launchpad, let me know. I’m always keen to hear how we can make Launchpad better.

However, if you’ve got a small-ish fix, persuade a developer that they should do it as part of Fix-it Friday.

Here’s how it works:

1. Join us in #launchpad on irc.freenode.net.
2. Either ping me – matthewrevell – or tell the channel what your requested fix is.
3. Use whatever means necessary to persuade a Launchpad developer they want to work on it.

Number three might be quite easy, or it might involve bribery.

We’re always keen to hear what Launchpad users want – seriously, Skype me (matthewrevell), email me (my first and last name at canonical.com) or ring me (mail me for the PSTN or SIP number). Fix-it Friday, though, is a chance for the Launchpad developers to work on their personal priorities. Now, if a few DVDs and some flattery persuade a developer that their priorities coincide with yours, then fair game

Join us for the first full Fix-it Friday in #launchpad on January 5th 2007!

In the most recent LugRadio, we discussed licence proliferation.

Our main conclusions were that:

• licence proliferation is damaging to free software because it makes it harder to remember what rights each licence grants us
• a licence picker, similar to that offered by Creative Commons, would aid understanding amongst projects and users
• if the OSI doesn’t show leadership on licence proliferation, we need someone else to step up.

We already face a battle in explaining the benefits of free software to non-enthusiasts: licensing is something that rarely makes it onto the radar outside our community. We can make the job easier by talking about concrete benefits but the conversation becomes increasingly difficult with every caveat introduced by yet another licence.

When licensing writing, music, visual art, we don’t need to be lawyers or even all that familiar with the Creative Commons licences. Instead, we need a rough idea of the rights we want to grant and the protections we want to retain. The Creative Commons licence picker translates those desires into the most appropriate licence.

On the show, we suggested licencepicker.com as a way to help users know where they stand and guide projects in making an informed licence choice, without the need for a law degree. It’s great to see that members of the LugRadio community have picked the idea up.

To better cope with the licences that we have, licencepicker.com could offer a clickable list of common FOSS applications, each with a summary of the licence under which it is released.

The genie is already out of the bottle, though. We have more licences than most people could name and we’ll undoubtedly see more. Although many people may agree that licence proliferation is unhelpful, each new licence’s creators believe that their modifications are necessary.

Perhaps we can learn a lesson from environmentally led government policy: the polluter pays. We need to raise awareness, within the community, of the pain that licence proliferation causes. As attitudes change, so it will become more difficult for projects to create yet another licence. If the pain of introducing a new licence becomes more equitable with the damage it causes to the user’s understanding of their freedom, there’s a chance that projects and companies will settle for an existing licence.

Free software is hobbled if we don’t understand the rights it grants us. Mark Shuttleworth highlights licence proliferation as one of the big challenges we face in making “free software ubiquitous on the desktop”. I see three ways to attack the problem:

• making licence proliferation uncomfortable
• making it easy for users to understand their rights
• helping new projects make informed licence choices.

These suggestions aren’t perfect, the list isn’t exhaustive and this all needs discussion. For example, some would argue that a licence picker would make it easier for projects to choose yet more obscure licences.

Fantastic news from last night’s Linux User and Developer Awards.

LugRadio Live 2006 won the Best Open Source Marketing Campaign award. We beat off some stiff competition from Ubuntu’s ShipIt scheme, which I’d assumed would definitely win!
Our marketing for LRL 2006 went well thanks largely to the help of three groups of people:

• OpenAdvantage whose design work gave our promotion a consistent, contemporary presentation
• Bytemark for their sponsorship of our programme, banners, etc
• and the awesome LugRadio community for their word of mouth!

I am slightly frustrated, though, that despite being nominated for and winning an award, not all of us could attend the ceremony. At over ?120 a ticket, the award ceremony was priced some way above our budgets and, I imagine, of most ordinary Linux users.

Now we LugRadio boys have to argue over who gets to have the award on their mantlepiece!

On the Ubuntu front, we won the Best Distribution award! Congrats to everyone in the community!
* By the way, my use of “FTW” is purely ironic

Recently, I’ve had something of a secret. It’s been hard to keep quiet but now I can let everyone know.

In a few weeks, I shall be joining Canonical to work on the marketing for Launchpad.

I’ve felt an affinity with Canonical – also the people behind Ubuntu – since we first interviewed Mark Shuttleworth, the company’s founder, on LugRadio. Their pragmatic, yet principled, human-focused approach matches my own passion for widening the acceptability of open source software.

I look forward to sharing some of my plans for the role, over the coming weeks, and to joining one of the most exciting tech companies in the world!