23 Jan
2005
23 Jan
'05
5:47 p.m.
On Friday 21 January 2005 08:26 pm, Peter Brinkmann wrote:
On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 08:03:58PM -0500, Lee Revell
wrote:
Proprietary means they're the sole source, thats why marketing likes it.
Nobody else's doohickey does what ours does because our technology is
proprietary. No Virginia, you can't buy the knock off and have it be just as
good because our's has got magical powers and we ain't telling what.
On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 01:25 +0100, Peter
Brinkmann wrote:
I didn't say I found this surprising, just slightly objectionable ;)
That said, I did find this line about
"newly-developed proprietary
software" slightly objectionable because they seem to imply that
proprietary software is a mark of quality, or else they wouldn't have
mentioned this in a marketing document.
So? That just means that (surprise!) the marketing people wrote that
press release and not the engineers. All marketing types think proprietary==good.
At the risk of splitting hairs, I'd say it's deeper than that. Marketing
types like proprietary stuff because they think that proprietary==$$$, but they wouldn't write this in a marketing document
unless they thought that
potential users will think that proprietary==quality. Is it true that
Joe Q User will have more faith in a piece of software if it's
proprietary? Chances are that the word has been focus group tested;
Joe Q User doesn't give a rats arse about quality, he wants exclusivity.
Pros can smell the bullshit, consumers cannot.
it would be interesting to know how the general public
perceives this
term.
Peter