[IAEP] how should we relate with our competitors? (was Re: First competitor?)

[David Farning]

2009/3/1 Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org>:
> Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>> I think that we should be establishing close contact with these groups
>> of people that have some goals in common with us. Our market and the
>> problems we try to solve are so vast, that there's more to win by
>> working together than by ignoring the others or trying to "leave them
>> behind".
>>
>> In many cases, the people deploying those competing environments will
>> see a place where Sugar makes more sense for their users and may be
>> interested to deploy it along, if we approach them in the correct way.
>>
>> To gain their interest, apart from the stronger points of Sugar
>> itself, we have something very valuable: our localization community.
>> Today, Sugar is translated to many languages that traditional software
>> has never been translated to. We have language teams that are highly
>> motivated by our educational goals and the prospect of improving
>> education in their countries through technology.
>>
>> By offering this advantage to our "competitors", we not only improve
>> their chances of meeting the same goals we have, but also grow our
>> community and improve the visibility of the Sugar brand.
>>
>> Also, take into account that only a very small part of the Sugar
>> platform is specific to Sugar itself. Most of it is shared with GNOME,
>> Maemo, XFCE, etc. So if a competitor deploys XFCE on a slow MIPS-based
>> netbook with little RAM and improves python, mozilla, gstreamer, gtk+
>> to run better and use less resources, Sugar also benefits from those
>> improvements.
>
> I strongly agree with you.
>
> Who would like to get in conctact?
>
I'll follow up, make the initial outreach, and try to find out who
within Sugar Labs they will best relate.

david