I love free software and almost everything about it but I fear that this kind of mindset that "all advertising is to be avoided" is why Linux Audio will never become as big a thing as it deserves to be.
Patrick's example of musicians marketing themselves struck a chord (unforeseen pun) with me, as it's exactly right: My band has been "hoping that people will come to our gigs" for the longest time but hope alone doesn't tell people that there are five guys playing some funky music in town, so now we're putting some effort into getting us out there.
Then there's a ton of really amazing creative people on YouTube who make most (if not all) of their living from advertising. Advertising that allows them to turn their passion into a living; hell, I wouldn't say no to that.
We have to be reasonable about this whole thing. I'd say that controlled non-evil marketing can actually improve people's lives in a variety of ways.
Best Wishes,
Kevin
On Sun, Apr 22, 2012 at 10:31 PM, Fred
<f.rech@yahoo.fr> wrote:
You do realise that many of the tools being produced by the Linux Audio
Community are being used in the advertising industry which makes us all
complicit in supporting it to start with.
Could you give examples please, my poor english can' follow here :-(
IMO we cannot avoid that fact that advertising and marketing is a very
crucial component to global industry which enables the corporate world to
continue to function.
I think you got the point here....
We should seek to manage our own channel and
therefore the message and brand
So Linux is a brand more than a Community now ????
rather than avoid it all together out of
some ridiculous fear of becoming Evil. We may even make enough money in
the process to pay some of our community members and help them to be
productive and motivated.
Money can be made with "products", software must be free, remember ???
If we continue to avoid the whole issue that is exactly what the "Evil"
marketing companies and corporations would like for us to do so that they
can have complete control over the message, brand, content and income
stream...
They, NOW, can have complete control over their brands, not much if you really look !
Nothing against you here, means we are discussing in a philosophical way, aren't we ?