Why technical writers aren’t using FOSS

“What I chiefly noticed was how little knowledge about FOSS had reached the average tech writer. And if such relatively expert computer users knew so little, what chance can there be of FOSS ideals motivating the everyday user? If the responses I received were typical, the day that a FOSS desktop is on every computer may be farther away than we think.”

The above quote is from Bruce Byfield’s great article in Newsforge:
http://software.newsforge.com/software/06/04/06/199255.shtml?tid=132

I’ve seen the same lack of knowledge as to “What is FOSS” and I have also seen too many times people who believed the FUD that FOSS is not good, you might loose files, you will not be as productive as with your current software if you turn to FOSS, etc.

As a first consequence when marketing FOSS products, one should analyze what makes the user want to learn say Page Maker. One way could be to promote the product by “how great it is”, “how useful features it has”, “look, now you can do that and that..”, etc.
Busy people need strong arguments to try something. Focus on that.

Only after someone has discovered the product he/she will want to learn deeper who and what is behind it and only then FOSS will be trusted. (Like it happened to me when I used OpenOffice.org for the first time and found it being simply great: I immediately wanted to register it and only then I discovered the community behind it and learned what FOSS is. — old story, 4 years ago).

BTW: Can you imagine how is it to have no viruses in your computer for 4 years ? Or to have no fear of viruses at all ?

FOSS can do that!

FOSS = Free and Open Source Software

~cdriga

Written by cdriga on April 14th, 2006 with no comments.
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