Novell Story Site Launched

An anonymous reader writes "Novell launched a Linux/Open Source story page where everyone can briefly describe how he/she helps pushing Linux or Open Source forward. For every submission a marker is set on a world map. You can also win prices, among them, although yet not mentioned on the page, 50 SLED 10 licenses."

Viral

[Lord_Dweomer]

For those who aren't clear on what this is from the blurb, this is a viral marketing campaign. However it is important to note that these sorts of things can be used as a tool by us. If you want to promote this, then by all means write your story, possibly win a prize etc. Not all marketing is bad, especially if you're interested in furthering the wellbeing of a certain company or product or movement (such as open source).

And of course the way a viral campaign really spreads is if you tell people. So if you feel this is important to promote and you want it to get more press, then write about it on your blogs.

No, I don't work for Novell, but I am involved in advertising and viral advertising in particular and I'm hoping that by explaining how we can harness this, people won't just jump down their throats and start bitching out all advertising in general, and slashvertising etc.

Ideas?

[Elektroschock]

Novell run out of ideas what to do for Linux? I have a simple idea: Listen to your customers and fire technology pushists like Nat Friedman. In fact it is Novell which fucked up our SuSe distribution and key Suse specialist were laid off, technology no one requested like Red Carpet broke stability and the KDE support, SuSe's great advantage was disrupted be the strange push for Gnome. No wonder when people like Friedman become desktop strategists. Listen to your customers, ask them what they want. Not: Listen to your managerial staff and the solutions they prefer and impose them on your userbase. It is possible that SuSe could regain its reputation. But users are fed up with Novell.

Re:Wait, Open what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's no better than apt-get;apt-upgrade, from a technical perspective. But it provides management with Peace Of Mind. You can interpret that as 'having someone to sue', if you prefer. Companies like this. I like this, too. I have on two occasions been completely stumped and needing a solution *now*, where there has been a Novell support agreement has been in place. On both occasions I was able to get an excellent turnaround from Novell and get the problems fixed. Turning the problems over to Novell for resolution left me free to do some other things that I needed to do urgently (like sedate the users). I haven't yet had to put RedHat support to the test. Of course, the number of times I've solved problems myself, with the help of various usenet groups and mailing lists, are too numerous to mention. Still, Novell were there when I *really* needed them, and that made it worth the fees.

My experience as an Linux consultant (and I'm fairly distribution agnostic: SuSE, RedHat, Debian... it's all good) leads me to believe that management tend to be risk-averse. The larger the company, the more risk-averse the management structure. By providing patching and support services, a Linux installation moves from being something that exists in Scary Shadow Land, to something that management can feel comfortable with. Any competent Joe Random Hacker can keep a few dozen Linux servers properly patched and running at peak efficiency. But management sleep better at nights knowing that should Joe Random Hacker leave tomorrow for pastures new, there is a large company with which they have a support agreement and to which they can turn in the intervening period between Joe Random Hacker leaving and Jenny Random Hacker (no relation) starting work. And Jenny Random Hacker might appreciate the support, too. Not everyone is as brilliant as Joe Random Hacker.

It can sometimes be ugly at the interface between hobbyist and commercial enterprise.

Re:Here are 1000000 + licenses for FREE !`

[grommit]

Whoops! You accidentally forgot to mention that to get enterprise level support for Ubuntu, you have to pay at least $250 to some company named Canonical.

I'm sure you weren't trying to compare Ubuntu's free support with SuSe's paid support, that's unpossible!