Promoting FOSS to People Who Don't Care

MarcoF brings us his take on how to cultivate interest in open-source software to casual users who aren't interested in or necessarily aware of its existence. Many people simply have trouble leaving their comfort zone of older proprietary software; what's the best way to get them to look at an open-source alternative? "Since most people would rather die than write or study software source code, it is actually counterproductive to promote software 'because you can modify it yourself and be part of its community'. Look for really practical advantages which can be enjoyed every day by the person you want to convince. Start from the actual deep passions, beliefs, interests and practical needs of the people in front of you and go backwards from there, delaying the apparition of terms like 'source code', 'the four software freedoms', GPL, Gnu, Linux, etc."

Comments

Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[ookabooka]

The selling point to get my father to switch to open office was that he could easily put it on new/other computers. He hated calling me up, asking me where that Office XP CD was only to have me tell him I have no idea. The idea of having 0 hassle when it comes to licenses and activation keys was the biggest selling point I can think of. Most people just want their computer to work and don't want to jump through a million hoops and keep track of that one cd-case whenever they want to install software on their new laptop.

"You mean I don't need a cd key for this? What happens if I lose the disc?"

"Uh, just download it again, it'll probably take 10 minutes or less on a good internet connection"

"Can I put this on your mother's computer?"

"You can put it on as many computers as you like, for free, have fun."

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[gEvil (beta)]

"But surely it can't be any good if they're just giving it away. After all, you don't get something for nothing."

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[AusIV]

I've found that people often have that cynical view of Open Source, and I typically have a hard time explaining why quality software is free. But since FOSS doesn't cost anything and I assure them there are no viruses, people tend to be pretty willing to try it out if they think they can save $20/$60/$100 on a proprietary program, and once they've tried it, they tend to change their tune.

Also, I keep portable versions of several programs on my flash drive, so if there's a computer handy I can show the program in question without even having to install it on their computer.

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[Kihaji]

Copying software is not free, it does have a cost. A more correct statement would be, "For the consumer, after paying for the things you need to copy the first piece of software, each additional piece is at or close to 0" And something similar for the producer of said software.

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[CastrTroy]

People pay all the time for things they can't hold in their hand. You can't hold a long distance phone call in your hand, why should you pay for that. You've already bought the phone. You can't hold a haircut in your hand. Sure you can look at and appreciate the haircut, but you can use the software too. People are just cheap. But they just know they can get software for free. Commercial software thrives off this. Let the software be free for everyone, and some percentage of people and businesses will pay for it, allowing you to make money. Make it impossible to copy, and it won't get popular enough to make any money. Very few software packages could survive without being free to those who weren't willing to pay.

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[Anonymous Coward]

Products != Services.

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[that this is not und]

The problem with that is that there are decades of history of low-quality shovelware software stuck in shrinkwrapped boxes beside the expensive Microsoft wares. A lot of it has been horrendous in quality. It's sort of a tainted category, unfortunately.

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[teh kurisu]

Yeah, and Google Docs is a service. So you would pay for Google Docs but not OpenOffice?

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[BrentH]

My dad is an excellent example of the problem posed in the article: he's more than willing to sink huge amounts of money in software (he's bought photoshop CS and then CS3 when it came out, dozens of raw converters and plugins, more than a thousand euro altogether). He just does not 'buy' it, when I tell him there's pieces of software that are free can be as good. He's never even tried the GIMP or Rawtherapee, and forget about Ubuntu, but you'd think that investing some time in these applications would save money. Not enough. When people /buy/ software, I think they assume it comes with some magic factor X that makes it better than anything free, because it cannot have factor X, because it's free. And you gotta have that factor X, because, well, you just gotta... I had to camouflage Firefox as IE to get him to use that, because I was sick of all these spyware that came streaming in. Also, the 'IT department' on my mothers school (she's a teacher) is another example. They're a poor school that couldn't even afford to repair a leaking roof for over a year (the water came an inch high once in the classroom), yet they made money available for a fat win2003 server and xp-systems everywhere, with remote desktop. This is kindergarten ffs, but the 'IT-people' havn't got a clue, being trained MS-monkeys. People are undescribibly lazy and stupid when it comes to technical stuff. They don't care to spend dollars/euros, they want to be done with, _zero_ _effort_ must be involved.

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[Anonymous Coward]

Been there, done that...

I work in Tech Support and in order to do some diagnostics on a client's server we told their "tech" to download ProcessExplorer from SYSINTERNALS. He refused "it's freeware it's full of Trojans" (mind you installed on the server was some really dodgy shareware backup software but we'll ignore that), fortunately for the "tech" my colleague took the call not me ;o). My colleague did however, say that although he doesn't know Mark Russinovich personally he considered it an insult as he'd been using their tools for 10 years.

The biggest irony in this being that Mark's reverse engineering of Windows is one of the major reasons anti-virus software works today...

People who claim to be Windows techs who don't know who SysInternals are, aren't techs AFAIC.

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[turing_m]

"When people /buy/ software, I think they assume it comes with some magic factor X that makes it better than anything free, because it cannot have factor X, because it's free. And you gotta have that factor X, because, well, you just gotta..."

There are a lot of people who are addicted to buying things that are cheap to produce and yet have 90% of their costs in advertising. These people buy bottled water, Macs, expensive cosmetics, spa treatments, celebrity diets, Bose sound systems etc. and would never, ever buy a generic item.

There are few things that cure this. Some time spent away from television helps. So does working for one of these mentioned companies, seeing that the cheap stuff has the exact same ingredients as the expensive stuff. A good economic depression also will work wonders, forcing everyone to lower their standards. When you're eating bark because there is no food, at about that time most people lose brand loyalty.

Re:Easy, no Licenses/activation key

[Risen888]

Sorry about the formatting of my reply. Here's the same rant, with the preview button!

More choice and freedom isn't always better either, they don't want to make choices because that takes consideration of the options and a decision-making process. For consumers, it's better to go straight to getting what they want

The whole concept of "consumers" is antithetical to what Free Software is. It's Free Software. It's about choice and freedom. It's not about being #1, or having the most users. Choice and freedom. Inevitable world domination is just a fringe benefit.

I think Linux would see wider adoption if it targeted "noobs" instead of power users.... I think that an idealogical shift towards making OSS easy and familiar would greatly expand it's adoption, but I also find it highly unlikely for such a shift to occur.

So what you want is... Windows? I don't say that to be an asshole, I'm serious. If what you want is "something that is exactly like Windows," please use Windows. Linux is not a free version of Windows. ReactOS is a (work-in-progress) free Windows, and good for them, I hope they succeed, there's a place for that. Linux is a free Unix. There's a place for that too.

There are some efforts to simplify things, but I still find myself driven back to the commandline, because not everyone is on-board with that effort.

Do you honestly think that the people who make this software, who are the same people that use this software, are actively trying to make it harder on themselves? As a guy who I admire once said, "stealth bombers are more complicated to operate than tricycles because they can fly! It's trying to make complex things "simplified" that leaves us with the broken mess that is Windows. You can have click-and-go install.exe files, but jackoffs will write viruses. You can have binary click-and-go hardware drivers, but they'll leave the system a smoking radioactive pit when they break. You can have upnp, but you're gonna get your ass pwnt. That's what happens.

Sometimes shit is hard. Sometimes you have to learn things. Sometimes you have to oh-my-god type things. If you want the payoff, you have to do the work. Do the work, man. It is worth it, I swear.

It's probably my fault for not knowing better... I'll bet my ignorance is to blame...

No, and being hard on yourself and calling yourself stupid isn't the answer. You have to do the work. Break it. Fix it. Breatk it. Fix it again. That's how we all learned. Do the work. Read the fucking manual. Then read it again. Get on IRC. Scour the forums. Hone your Google-fu. If after all that you still don't have the answer, email the package maintainer and say "What the fuck is the problem here?!" Read the fucking manual again. Fix it. Then break it again. The only way you're to blame is if you quit. Give yourself a chance.

Every time a n00b marks a thread "solved," an angel gets its wings. Good luck.

concentrate on the F, forget the OSS

[petes_PoV]

Just tell 'em it's free[1].

That way of they don't like it, they've lost nothing. They can always go ahaed and buy some stuff.

As the article says, this is about people who don't care. All they want is to get stuff done. They're not interested in discussing your personal philosophy so just give them what they want - without the sermon.

[1] yes, yes, I know free beer or speech. Don't forget we're still talking about people who don't care

Thet fact that it's free ...

[haluness]

seems to resonate a lot with most people. Of course, this assumes that installation etc does not involve a command line. But given a MSI like installer, I think that free would be a big selling point, followed by be able to do what you usually do.

Re:Thet fact that it's free ...

[pclminion]

Everything else is free too, if you are willing to ignore the law, which a lot of people are. I don't think it's a terribly strong argument. In fact, it may even work against you by causing the person to think "Hell, this software sucks so bad they can't even charge for it."

Re:Thet fact that it's free ...

[zappepcs]

Microsoft themselves have given me the strongest argument I need: "you will never see a pop up window telling you that your software needs to be registered to work" ... there is no Ubuntu Genuine Advantage, and unless someone writes a malicious piece of code, it will never call home. In other words, it's safe to use.

Re:Thet fact that it's free ...

[betterunixthanunix]

It depends on how you phrase it. For example, this is the explanation I commonly give when I tell people about Red Hat and how they give things like JBOSS out for free:

"The business model is centered around charging businesses to get help from a Red Hat employee with setting up or troubleshooting their software, so it is in Red Hat's best interests to give the software out for free. Of course, for people like us, that just means getting free, legal software to use."

People are very open to that idea, because it makes perfect sense to them. Granted, RHEL itself is not free, but that's the sort of explanation people are responsive to (and it is true) and it helps to build trust in free (as in beer) software. The idea that open source software is inherently of a lower quality still exists, but the way to show that that is not the case is to mention companies like Red Hat, Mandriva, and Canonical, who have made a lot of money giving all this stuff away.

Lead by Example

[Tom]

Here's what I do: I lead by example. Then, when someone comes to me with his IE problem, I (honestly) tell him that I'm sorry but I can't help him with that because I use a better browser instead and point him to Firefox.

I don't evangalise, not anymore. But if you come to me with a question or a problem, you get to hear my opinion and very often that is "sorry, that sounds like it's a windos/IE/MS-Office/whatever-specific problem. I don't do windos/IE/MS-Office/etc anymore, can't help you with that. I can only recommend you check out Apple/Firefox/OpenOffice/etc as an alternative, it works for me and doesn't have that problem."

Re:Lead by Example

[quickgold192]

Apple? That's like the opposite of open source.

Three simple words

[TheRaven64]

Vendor lock in.

The biggest advantage of Free Software is freedom from vendor lock in. Ever found a bug in a program and been told 'yes, we fixed that. Pay $100 for the new version if you want the fix?' Ever wanted to run the software on another machine and discovered you have to pay extra for another license? Ever wanted to send a file to someone else, found they don't have the software to open it, and wanted to send them a copy?

Re:Three simple words

[stewbacca]

You'll lose nearly every person this article is intended for if you mention "vendor lock-in". Normal people don't care.

Ask Walmart

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest Linux computer Walmart is selling has moved enough units that it was out of stock for a while. My questions would be:

1. How many of those units came back because people couldn't cope with Linux or were disappointed that they didn't get Windows?
   
2. How many customers were so satisfied that they bought second units or recommended them to friends?
   

Answer those two questions and you will know if there is any point trying to convert people who don't care. There's no point trying to convert them if they aren't going to like the experience anyway.

I tell people it's a sovereignty issue

[Omnifarious]

It's about who owns their computer, them or the people who write the software. I point out numerous instances where various bits of proprietary software cause their computer to act in the developers best interests and against their own. DRM is one such, but there are others. I talk about how having the source code available allows 3rd parties to check up on the code and hold the original programmers accountable.

This is a complex argument, and hard for some people to grasp. But when people do it's pretty effective. Some people still don't care, but it's a much smaller percentage than the ones who think they don't care whether or not they have the source.

I think, maybe, I could refine it by linking it to voting machine issues and more people might get it then.

I also talk a bit about how they can give any software they have to friends for free and that it's perfectly legal and everything, and really that's how it should be. But that's a minor part of my little presentation.

Start simple, don't preach

[AusIV]

I've learned that trying to convince someone who is happy with their software that they need to switch will be fruitless.

- When people are having problems with IE, I promote Firefox.
- When people are buying a new computer, I encourage them to try OpenOffice before buying MS Office. I've had several people try it and stick with it.
- When people complain about the loud ads in AIM, or having to run 4 different programs for AIM, Google Talk, MSN and Yahoo, I promote Pidgin.
- When someone wants to do some photo editing, but can't afford to shell out the cash for Photoshop, I suggest they try the Gimp. Nobody seems to like it, but they get their work done.
- When somebody can't get a media file to run, I suggest they try out VLC.

I have portable versions of all of the above (and then some) on my flash drive, so I can show people what I'm talking about if there's a computer nearby.

Once somebody is using most of the above software on Windows, I might suggest they try Linux if they voice a complaint about Windows (viruses, activation issues, slow boot time, bogged down system, etc.). I've gotten two people to try it out, one stuck with it, the other got a Mac.

There may be better promoters than my self, but I've found that if you're trying to push software (Free or not) on people who don't want it, they'll resist and you'll end up looking like an ass.

Re:Start simple, don't preach

[Random Destruction]

Most FOSS is only "free" if your time is worthless

Could you expand on this point? I assume you mean that FOS software is hard to set-up or something, but I really haven't experienced that. Sure some programs are shitty, but so is a lot of non FOS stuff.

I have found FOSS to be less of a time commitment in many ways, as I can install it all with a click of the mouse. No cds, serial numbers, allowing the software to phone home, updating programs one by one, etc, etc.

Re:Evangelist in the Office

[ScrewMaster]

My advice ... keep this person as far away from your server as you possibly can.

However, the community is part of the problem...

[quetwo]

I try to promote FOSS projects as much as I can -- however it is the community that often kicks themselves in the butt. Often times I have received calls from friends or co-workers that installed a one-off OSS project that I recommended. Usually when they took the time to find the proper support for something that is broken, people's responses are "Well, go fix it!", or "Download the latest code from the SVN, change XYZ to file ZZZ.cpp and compile." They have no idea what an SVN is, let alone an idea of how to use it, or compile the results.

Lots of these people just want to use their computer. Paying some company $50 is no big deal if they can call them up and complain about a bug or mis-guided feature. Heck, they don't mind paying the $150 for Office because they know it is a well-supported community, and just about everybody can help them. (OpenOffice is making great strides in this area too).

Re:My solution

[betterunixthanunix]

Amazingly, that is exactly how to generate interest. People like things that are shiny, translucent, 3D, etc.

We actually had a discussion here at FUDCon about this very issue yesterday, and one of the real problems most people encountered wasn't generated interest as much as it was keeping people interested when they encounter little bugs or usability issues (there are quite a few in the Fedora utils which will be resolved this year). Unfortunately, polishing off apps to make them more usable (or even just having them update the UI during a complex operation) is not a high salience issue, and so such things often get neglected in open source projects, even though they can be a deciding factor in keeping non-programmers interested.

Re:Here, try this DVD

[ACS Solver]

Absolutely, not preaching is the key. Don't start talking about modifying the source, freely studying it, etc. - that gives the impression that this software is for enthusiasts only. Always emphasize the practical advantages. That means, saying that the software is free as in beer and showcasing the funcionality. For someone who's using IE (in particular, IE6), install Firefox, show tabs, show DownthemAll, show Adblock, show CustomizeGoogle - they'll be sold.

Likewise, when trying to get "normal" users to install Ubuntu, tell them that they'll never need to install an antivirus or fight spyware. Yes, being free is important, but emphasize the functional advantages over the lack of cost or, say, the lack of activation - because the fact is that many people are happy with their versions where activation is, uh, "deactivated".

Re:Don't care why...?

[Xiph1980]

What's with this fucking spam all of the sudden.
Isn't is possible to add in a layer orso that blocks all those IP addresses that are used for this crap?
Anonymous Cowardness is good and all to be able to talk about a company acting (illegal|immoral), but isn't it possible to just add a spamfilter of some kind?
Talk to Google or something, see if you can make a deal and have a spamfilter inserted somewhere in your rackspace.
For the meanwhile, I've just set my browse level to +1, for the first time since I registered on slashdot.

Re:Obvious counterexample they'll understand

[Irish_Samurai]

If you think Google is free, you don't get it.

Search isn't Google's product, you are. They sell your eyes to advertisers. Search is just the honey pot to get you there.

Why are people so blatantly naive?

Offer to buy them a drink.

[tknd]

I was in the same group of software mavens, the FOSS crowd, and ran into the same issues everywhere from home users to big businesses. That is I did not understand why it was hard to convince people otherwise with my beliefs on open source. Then I started taking business classes and I got into a few meetings between the managers about large software purchases and I finally began to understand the whole picture. The problem is, we geeks do not understand people adn their internal perception of risk. As I scroll through the comments here I see some stuff that I can already see not working and some stuff working (but the author does not understand why it works).

The reason why people are so ready to throw money at a problem (and a lot of money in some cases) is by throwing money at the problem you are at least assured that you have entered into some sort of contract where whatever solution you get will come with some sort of support service. They don't care that you have the solution. For all they know, you could just be trying to con them out of their money or trying to waste their time. Instead, they want assurance that your solution will work as advertised after the transaction has been made. In otherwwords, they want assurance that the perceived risk they have in there minds can be mitigated by the money they give. And they will never state that either because they are acting based on experience and emotion. People don't hand over money knowing full well that it is really just there to eliminate the risk. They will say that they agree that they are handing over the money because it makes them sleep better a night or they feel like it (what they get in return) will probably turn out as expected.

So when you, a FOSS geek, comes along and says, "hey, this free stuff works better than what you paid for" they are not going to believe you and will turn down the offer. That is not because they don't trust you, that is because they are not offered any assurance should you happen to be wrong this one time. And if you happen to be wrong, now they just lost an hour or so of their life (time is just as important as money).

How can you convince them otherwise? Easy, mitigate the perceived risk in their minds. They want assurance, the safety in knowing that even the 5 or 10 minutes you're taking from their life is going to be worth it.

So one particularly easy way to do that is to make them a deal: if they try the FOSS software for a day, and they find it does everything they need then they will buy you a drink, but if at the end of the day they think it does not work as you claimed then you'll buy them a drink. Besides getting you an easy free drink, this offers them the assurance that their time is not wasted: if the software works (there was no risk), then they save money (minus the drink), but if the software does not work, they get a drink for the invested time/effort. Without the drink it is a win-lose situation (if they win they win free software, if they lose they lose time and effort) and suddenly their perceived risks in losing take over. By introducing the drink you take their mind off of focusing on the risk involved and offer them some assurance that the risk they think is there is actually not there.

Others here have claimed selling the software by advertising features and "bling" that they have not seen before. While this works, the problem is now you have people spinning cubes and not exploring other things that the software is capable of. Instead you've sold them a "shiny object" and they'll use it just like a "shiny object." That's not what you want, you want them to use it as a replacement and you want them to gain confidence to eliminate the perceived risk they associated with FOSS.

Finally I want to be clear that offering a drink will not always work because people are different. Some people are more conservative than others and some people will take quite a bit more social effort to get moving along. But I assure you, the problem always revolves around ri