Re: [Firebird-devel] Supervising Hierarchy???

[Mark O'D. <mar...@lu...>]

Jeff Dodds wrote:

> Claudio and Mark,
> 
>   I don't want to get into a long debate.  Obviously we see the issues from
> different perspectives.  Since I am new to the lists I will bow out. 


Don't let that stop you, I think it was a timely question.

>  Most
> of the members must find the current system satisfactory or else they would
> have changed it.

> 
>   The fact that I don't see how the current structure can operate
> effectively I will chaulk up to my naivete.

Don't get me wrong, your ideas are good, its just currenty we don't 
really have the resources to change.  perhaps that will change as things 
go along, then we can consider changing things.  It mainly needs full 
time people and we currently don't have any.  Its only here becase the 
few people are working fairly hard with the strings and sealing wax (and 
I think not doing toooo badly).  Later if/when the situation changes 
then I think we can consider changing it.

> 
>   I must say though that I think marketing decisions like; appearances of
> webspace, webspace naming, wording of .rpm descriptions and the like,
> dispersement of documentation, logos, catch phrases, and cohesive focus of
> brand naming, are all equally as important as the inclusion of bug fixes and
> new features to the source code.  I feel marketing decisions should be held
> up to the same scrutiny and judgement as changes to the code and should not
> ever be taken lightly.  

I agree, but in essense you need something behind the marketting fluff. 

This all runs on what people want to do, if someone wants to do some 
marketting, then I happy to have them (but just at the moment higher on 
my priority list is would be to have someone to do some serious stress 
and volume testing :-).  

After than then maybe marketting, but don't let me stop anyone from 
offering to help out here :-).

> The lesson of Microsoft should at least be given
> acknowledgement, Microsoft is built on marketing not flawless code, but it
> has gone too far.

I think Bill's big advantage was always be cheaper than the oposition, 
particularly if you have a crappy product.  Well I think we're cheaper 
:-), but I don't think we've got a crappy product.

> 
>   I feel the emphasis in the Open Source community, since the stock market
> crash, has taken a hard right turn away from marketing.  

I think a lot of people lost a lot of money investing in schemes that 
never had a business plan that was going to make a cent, (other than 
expecting their stock price to go up further) and were doomed to fail. 

So if we had investment we would do marketting, and some more testing 
and it would all happen fairly quickly.  However we dont currently, but 
it's going to happen (marketting included) it's just going to take a while.


> I feel there should
> always be a strong partnership and equality between marketing and quality
> control.  In an ideal world perfect quality control would mean the same
> thing as marketing, but sadly this is not the case.

I always though good marketting was the triump of selling something 
totally useless for a lot of money, (fridges to eskimos, say "rinse 
twice" with your shampoo and double the amount you sell that sort of 
thing :-). 

Sorry, Im getting off the point, and starting to be a bit rude, but the 
idea of marketting <==> quality control tickled my fancy a bit.   In 
general I agree with you and you've raised some interesting points, it's 
just that without the immediate arrival of lots of cash or people it 
will all take a little time.

So enjoy the ride, and if you feel you can contribute in any way, feel 
free to do so.

Cheers

Mark

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