[Sigia-l] Marketing vs. design

[Listera]

Michael Robertson (of MP3.com. and Lindows fame):

I decided to start a software company called CompareSoft, which would try to
better market and sell open source alternatives for Macintosh and Microsoft
Windows computers. The driver behind this idea was to take the "generic
drug" approach to marketing - promote open source products as software with
the "same active ingredients" as Windows or Mac, but at a much lower price.
We spent the money to create beautiful packaging and build versions of
several open source products with more mainstream titles and terminology...
OpenOffice.org became CompareOffice, GIMP became ComparePhoto etc.

<http://www.michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=195>

Leaving aside the brazenly parasitic nature of this enterprise, do you feel
open source software is not properly "marketed" or not properly designed?

---- 
Ziya

Best Practices,
For when you've run out of your own ideas and context.