Macports needs a little marketing ....

[Russell Jones]

On 06/11/16 17:28, Lawrence Velázquez wrote:
> On Nov 6, 2016, at 11:50 AM, Ken Cunningham <ken.cunningham.webuse at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> While MacPorts itself could certainly benefit from better PR, I do not
>>> see why we should do free advertising for upstream developers.
>> but you see - macports exists to allow people to more easily install the products of these upstream developers.
>>
>> otherwise macports has no use.
> Taking on a labor-intensive editorial role does not make MacPorts better at installing open-source software.
>
>> If you want people to buy gas, you sell them cars. (Or electricity -> electric cars, if you're feeling green this season).
> A tortuous analogy. I don't see Exxon-Mobil or BP selling cars anywhere.
>
True, AIUI they've tended to oppose non-petrol cars rather than 
advertise for petrol cars 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F#Oil_companies 
IMO, the order of consumption is the wrong way around-- the software is 
more like the fuel (the driving power), the package manager the car (the 
vehicle that gets you where you want to go). But fuel costs money, and 
you don't want to remind people of that when selling a car. Whereas 
FLOSS doesn't explicitly cost money-- to install and run, at least.

The software is also like the journey and destination-- the sweeping 
vistas you can purportedly zoom along through-- and car manufacturers 
certainly try to associate those with their products.

Russell