Linux desktop will trounce Windows 7

This month naked marketing muscle once again shows us how it should be done. In the UK, Microsoft made it to number one as the most respected and trusted brand, ahead even of Mercedes-Benz. The people have spoken.

Quite an achievement considering Vista bombed and no amount of PR power could persuade the non-OEM consumer otherwise. Now, obviously before it was too late and the Windows brand itself was damaged, Windows 7 has been released. Word is that it is OK, better even than XP.

Thus, the hiatus that may have been the golden Window of Vista opportunity for Linux on the desktop will soon be gone. The power of the 'brand' coupled with a product that actually works is hard to stop. If you think that Microsoft has done a number on the Linux netbook using venerable XP and a fat cheque book then just wait for Windows 7 to get into full swing.

Oh oh. How then can anyone say that Linux will trounce Windows on the desktop?

Branding and Dumbness

To many, possibly most, people brand image is everything. Apparently amongst a certain type of consumer 'Dolce & Gabana' stickers are a significant reason to buy articles of apparel (well certainly for Baron-Cohen's Bruno anyway). Other types, say driving their nine year old Mondeos, similarly dream to own a Mercedes... just like their local drug supplier.

Branding is expensive and very important. For example, folk will now buy Skoda cars because they know they are well engineered, good value and belong to the Volkswagen Audi group. Skoda sales-people like the SEAT sales-people remind potential customers that they are really buying an Audi at discount prices. Up-scaling a brand such as Skoda costs serious marketing money and even that required a lift up from an already long term expensively established brand (Vorsprung whatever).

Despite the best efforts of Red Hat and Ubuntu I doubt whether they have enough financial depth to build brands to rival Microsoft!

Brand buyers are acting dumb when they buy. Phrases like 'no one got fired for buying IBM' translate today to 'no one got fired for buying Microsoft'. It is shorthand for 'I know you don't understand what you are doing but if you buy X you will be OK'. Similarly Dolce & Gabana buyers may or may not have style, taste and discernment (like Bruno) but they don't need to be so blessed. They just need to buy the brand.

This begs the question though, how to get folk to buy into 'free, unbranded, open source software' (fuoss). Who buys into FUOSS?

Freedom and control

Make no mistake Open Source Software would have been strangled at birth had it not been founded on free labour contributing to community endeavor. You can't go bust or be bought out in this volunteer world. The FOSS model is now well understood and commericalised but the point is it succeeded by NOT playing the same game as its proprietary rivals.

This is the key to the success in marketing FUOSS. Take Debian Linux, for example. 'Debian' happens to mean a lot to my company. It stands for openness, reliability, sane engineering and as such the name carries connotations that I suppose makes it a brand, a good brand of Linux to the likes of us.

But here is the distinction, we the users 'brand' it, they (Debian) just make good software.

If you can't win the game (ie. the commercial branding game) then don't play the game. Play another game.

The unbranding game unfortunately cannot be played by the dumb. It requires knowledge and experience to 'user attribute' brand virtues that are more conventially obtained by multi-million dollar advertising campaigns.

Thus the next question is then what can be done to achieve recognition from those normally only reached through the mass media? This is essential because the majority of procurement decison makers, corporate or individual are in this category, dumb or not so dumb.

The answer I think is relatively simple. The unique virtue of FUOSS is freedom. Through freedom the user has control. The freedom is simply to do what you want to do? For example download music, write stuff, communicate,collaborate but without the artificial barriers of cost and licence restrictions.

How then will this freedom translate into device-dominance for Linux and FUOSS? How will the smart unbranders prevail?

Young and Poor

A clue is provided by the opening paragraph. Microsoft won the top ten brand survey, who were the runers up?

Here are the top 10 UK brands 2009:

1. Microsoft
2. Rolex
3. Google
4. British Airways
5. BBC
6. Mercedes-Benz
7. Coca-Cola
8. Lego
9. Apple
10. Encyclopaedia Britannica

Yawn, pass the pipe and slippers grandad. Young executives buy Audi, old blokes (and drug dealers) buy Mercs. How cool is Coca Cola, British Airways? Hey, let's tune into the Beeb dude. I'll add the fake Rolex to my spam Viagra order.

This is the list of the uncool, I could say undead.

Young folk define cool but they are now also bloody mean; they use open source free Facebook, Bebo, YouTube, Google Docs, nick music from each other using Limewire and so on. They pretty much don't pay for stuff. Pay for word processing or a spreadsheet? Get real.

The oldies, say the Windows 95 generation (their parents), still pay for software especially as it gets harder to thieve it from work. These few may buy Windows 7 (just to show they are hip) the kids wont, believe me.

Generation Z, lets call them the next lot of young without jobs or hope of unnatural affluence, expect free hardware and free software just like Carphone Warehouse is offering with its latest Dell 10" offer. The next-gen PC/Laptop/netbook/smartbook/smartphone will make money from services. Even a penny more for the OEM OS will be a minus.

So, I can predict with confidence that my (long dead) Dad's fully paid for MS Office Pro 97 which I still 'lend' out to our FD, is of historical interest only. No doubt if he were still with us (my Dad not the FD) he would be buying Windows 7 to impress me.

Thanks to the young and poor, Linux and FUOSS will dominate the next decade. Sorry MS, you just made it into the top ten has-beens.