Jeremy White wrote:
No objection from me.. Although, I should mention that I haven't seen much in the way of a link to donate to the project. Theres no link on the main page anywhere that I can see. Perhaps the fund would be a little bigger if it was easier to find a donate link?
Hmm. On the lower right hand side of the main page is a donate link, and there is also a donations request on Sourceforge.
But you raise a good point; feel free to make a suggestion for how it should change (a patch?) - I'm certainly not opposed.
(Although the honest truth is that we raise more money than we need right now, at least for Wine. For CodeWeavers, we can always use more money :-/)
Cheers,
Jeremy
hmm.. I didn't see that at all lol. I did however notice the contributing link shortly after I sent the last email. I think if we put the donate link (as well as the codeweavers link) on the left just under the search link they might get noticed a little more.. Of course you do raise a good point about raising more money than wine really needs, so on to the next idea... The short answer is that I dont have an idea right now, but I have done some thinking about it.. If you want the long answer, keep reading, else, just click close lol...
Obviously codeweavers requires advertising and marketing in order to get new customers. The majority of that advertising so far has been done by the community and word of mouth. The biggest step towards taking codeweavers mainstream is obviously to get more people to switch to linux.. the press has done a decent job of helping us out in that respect, but a lot of people dont read the magazines.
I mean I see it all the time on various forums, my favorite being the forum entitled the worst tech support call you have ever made... Someone will get DSL service, and not have a router, and think that it will work out of the box with whatever os they use... So when it doesnt and they cant figure it out, they call dsl tech support, and ask "Do you support Linux?"... Guess what the tech support rep asks 99% of the time... "What is Linux? Is that a new version of Windows?".....
Back to the point though, people dont read magazines or stuff on the internet so they dont know theres an alternative to windows. That means they dont know about cW or crossover. How do we get more users over to Linux? Good question, unfortunately one I don't have an answer for right now. Once we get users to Linux, or maybe even as the hook to get them to switch would be to show them crossover while showing them linux and how not prone to viruses it is, show them internet explorer running under it, or better yet show them stuff like word, excel, and adobe, and then show them firefox and say ok ie is the only app we are going to take away from you.. then the security issues are small (no ie to infect) but they can still use their regular stuff, and their machine will seem more responsive compared to how it ran on windows.
I'm sure those are all ideas your people have already had and discussed, but shoot, it would be nice to see some linux based booths at e3 or ces or the revamped comdex once it comes out.. of course the best way to get mainstream is the force your way mainstream, more and better placement on store shelves.. get the stores to start pitching linux and the benefits of using it over windows. then have the rep help them decide on a distro and put them in touch with someone familiar with linux. of course that is all beyond codeweavers and wine's scope, but that is the idea.. get other linux companies to start pushing it more.
M$ wants to play hardball? We gotta start predicting their pitches.
Tom
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Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea)