[SoaS] [Marketing] Governance & Trademark in the Wiki

[Sean DALY]

Peter, I think you're misunderstanding me, perhaps I'm not expressing
myself clearly.

I want to avoid at any cost that a lousy experience be associated with
"Sugar on a Stick". So I'm against anyone calling anything "Sugar on a
Stick Remix", not for it. As I said, a "remix" is only understood by
people if the main brand is strong, not yet the case with SoaS (or
Fedora or any other GNU/Linux distro).

A remix called e.g. "Cream Pie Sugar on a Stick Remix" will fragment
the Sugar on a Stick marketing and is bad enough, but if the quality
is not there, it will damage the brand even further.

There's no way we can QA test a number of variants, so in my view we
shouldn't - they should just be called something else.

We can avoid variants related to language/keyboard setup and Activity
bundles in different ways: a one-page PDF translated into many
languages explaining how to do basic locale config, maybe later a
first-boot setup wizard.

Variants customized for schools should be supported first-tier
locally, especially if changes are not just cosmetic (boot screen for
example). These could be called "Sugar on a Stick" locally as
Sebastian proposes, but not distributed as "Sugar on a Stick".

In my view, it's normal and desirable that we encourage variants, we
just need for them not to damage the Sugar on a Stick brand.

Sean


On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Sean,
>
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This does seem sensible, but I don't see how it will help our
>> branding, unless the decision rests with us to allow a "remix" to use
>> the brand name. Otherwise, we'll just fragment the brand. What will
>> people doing remixes contribute to our marketing? Wouldn't it be
>> better if they worked with us?
>
> But what about quality of the product. If you have someone that does a
> bad 'remix' and calls it the name that the upstream, well tested main
> line product and people review that bad "Sugar on a Stick" you also
> give the brand a bad name. Which then means someone needs to QA all
> the various different iterations of various products that are using
> SOAS to ensure the user gets a good experience and level of quality
> that you would expect of the main SugarLabs SOAS. We don't have the
> engineering resources to be able to do that. So your better off
> allowing a remix to be be called "Blah Blah SOAS Remix" so there is
> inclusion of the brand with in the name but also differentiation. So
> it increases the visibility of the brand while also keeping an arms
> length appart to ensure the core product doesn't lose the quality of
> the Brand due to another variant that may be dodgy.
>
>> "Remixes" are brand extensions, sometimes called "flankers", which can
>> work if a brand is strong. There's not much point doing so with a weak
>> brand I'm afraid. I would bet that Fedora is a better-known brand than
>> Sugar Labs today, but it's still a very weak brand. (I'm sure One
>> Laptop per Child is a better-known brand, which is why it would be far
>> more effective for us to do joint marketing with them when they are
>> ready.)
>
> Yes, but if you have a dozen "Sugar on a Stick" variants all called
> "Sugar on a Stick" but half of them are complete shit your not going
> to end up with a good brand and your worse off when you started
> because people have the opinion "that is crap" and you damage the core
> Sugar Labs product.
>
>> What we are trying to do with Sugar Labs is create the conditions for
>> a breakout. It's not easy; if it were, everybody would be doing it
>> with their brands :-) I've said before that what Sugar on a Stick
>> actually *is* can evolve; it's the brand that's fragile and needs
>> protection.
>
> And you want to do that by allowing anyone to use it? That doesn't
> protect it in my opinion.
>
> Regards,
> Peter
>