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This is unrelated from the rest of the project, but why do open source projects in general have such inexplicably bad marketing? To the degree where you can't b

This is unrelated from the rest of the project, but why do open source projects in general have such inexplicably bad marketing? To the degree where you can't believe that somebody actually thought this would work? To the degree you can't believe someone with no marketing experience could be this inept? What is /e/? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? How do I tell people about it? Does it stick out in a Google search (which it does not)? But on that line, why do we have GIMP, GNOME, Everything starting with the letter K on KDE, KDE itself, Hector Martin's "Asahi Lina" nonsense, and on and on...

smoldesu 4y ago
> why do open source projects in general have such inexplicably bad marketing? Because they don't pay a marketing team to work 9-5 alongside them? That's probably the reason why all the art is ugly too, their website kinda sucks, et al. But that's not really the main appeal of this project, and I think it's honorable that they're focusing all their effort on the product rather than the vanity. If they did spend time writing marketing double-speak, the HN refutation du-jour would be that they're not focusing on privacy enough. > But on that line, why do we have GIMP, GNOME, Everything starting with the letter K on KDE, KDE itself, Hector Martin's "Asahi Lina" nonsense, and on and on... Why was one of the first NES emulators called Nesticle? Who knows, and who cares? The quality of the software spoke for itself, and it opened the doors to decades of unsuccessful litigation from Sony and Nintendo. The same thing happened for Linux, Nginx, Kubernetes, BSD... you name it. The utility of these projects far outweighs their respective sex appeal, so why even bother making a pretty landing page? While we're on the topic, why does Apple have such a bad history of choosing names for their stuff too? "Xcode" doesn't confer anything to me as a user, at least "Visual Studio" tells me I'm about to be using an IDE. Also makes it sound like an x11/Xorg tool, which it certainly isn't. Similarly, "Logic Pro", "Final Cut" and even "iTunes" are dorky titles. Even Microsoft, the patron saint of bad UX design, has the balls to just call their app "Music" and "Photos".
- toxican 4y ago
  I'm a little hung up on the fact that you think between "Xcode" and "visual studio" that the latter is the one that more suggests you're about to be writing code in an IDE.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    On every Unix box I've ever used, any tool prefixed with 'X' usually relates to the display server technology. MacOS is the only outlier here, and the 'X' doesn't really mean anything to me as a user. The word 'code' hints that it's a tool for development, but altogether it could mean anything from a compiler to a Xorg IDE. At least Visual Studio conveys the idea that you're going to be using a GUI application with designer/compositional tools, and adding 'Code' to it clarifies that it's a visual tool for manipulating code. It's a bit of a reach, but if you think the average iPad user could tell you what "Logic" does, I'd be inclined to disagree.
rglullis 4y ago
Do you need good marketing to guide your decisions? Do you need someone else validating your choices? Why do you care about "good marketing"? > How do I tell people about it? "hey, the website is https://e.foundation https://e.foundation, here is the link" That was not so hard, was it?
- evilos 4y ago
  Why would you put work into something meant for others to use, and then make it hard for people to find it?
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Who said that is hard to find it? Is it hard compared to what? How much does it cost (in times and resources) to make it "easier" to find it? The people working on it are doing it for free (as in, it cost me literally nothing to download and install /e/OS on my phone) and you think you still feel entitled to get "good marketing" on top of it? If you think that the product is lacking in some part, how about you CONTRIBUTE to make it better instead of just diminishing the work of others? What a fucking lame attitude.
    - evilos 4y ago
      It's like if your buddy created an awesome website that provided a great free service and then called it jflasdjfjasdfjkereifsd.yzy You'd wonder they shot themselves in the foot like that. It would've been easy to give it a good name but instead they severely limited the potential of their hard work for seemingly no reason. It's not entitlement, it is confusion. Also why are you so confrontational?
      - rglullis 4y ago
        I don't need to type the address to use it. If the site is "awesome", I will use it regardless of the name.I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE NAME, I care about what it does and what are the guiding principles. I am confrontational because your "confusion" is just stupid concern trolling. Do you think that it is important to get more people to be less dependent on Big Tech? Then here is an operating system that works pretty well. This is what you need to be telling people, not how you think that the name is bad. Stop worrying about the "marketing", and just use and promote better alternatives. By being and acting self-conscious about something that does not matter, you are not collaborating at all.
gidorah 4y ago
GIMP really bothers me. It makes it really hard to recommend.

smoldesu 4y ago

> why do open source projects in general have such inexplicably bad marketing? Because they don't pay a marketing team to work 9-5 alongside them? That's probably the reason why all the art is ugly too, their website kinda sucks, et al. But that's not really the main appeal of this project, and I think it's honorable that they're focusing all their effort on the product rather than the vanity. If they did spend time writing marketing double-speak, the HN refutation du-jour would be that they're not focusing on privacy enough. > But on that line, why do we have GIMP, GNOME, Everything starting with the letter K on KDE, KDE itself, Hector Martin's "Asahi Lina" nonsense, and on and on... Why was one of the first NES emulators called Nesticle? Who knows, and who cares? The quality of the software spoke for itself, and it opened the doors to decades of unsuccessful litigation from Sony and Nintendo. The same thing happened for Linux, Nginx, Kubernetes, BSD... you name it. The utility of these projects far outweighs their respective sex appeal, so why even bother making a pretty landing page? While we're on the topic, why does Apple have such a bad history of choosing names for their stuff too? "Xcode" doesn't confer anything to me as a user, at least "Visual Studio" tells me I'm about to be using an IDE. Also makes it sound like an x11/Xorg tool, which it certainly isn't. Similarly, "Logic Pro", "Final Cut" and even "iTunes" are dorky titles. Even Microsoft, the patron saint of bad UX design, has the balls to just call their app "Music" and "Photos".

toxican 4y ago
I'm a little hung up on the fact that you think between "Xcode" and "visual studio" that the latter is the one that more suggests you're about to be writing code in an IDE.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  On every Unix box I've ever used, any tool prefixed with 'X' usually relates to the display server technology. MacOS is the only outlier here, and the 'X' doesn't really mean anything to me as a user. The word 'code' hints that it's a tool for development, but altogether it could mean anything from a compiler to a Xorg IDE. At least Visual Studio conveys the idea that you're going to be using a GUI application with designer/compositional tools, and adding 'Code' to it clarifies that it's a visual tool for manipulating code. It's a bit of a reach, but if you think the average iPad user could tell you what "Logic" does, I'd be inclined to disagree.

rglullis 4y ago

Do you need good marketing to guide your decisions? Do you need someone else validating your choices? Why do you care about "good marketing"? > How do I tell people about it? "hey, the website is https://e.foundation https://e.foundation, here is the link" That was not so hard, was it?

evilos 4y ago
Why would you put work into something meant for others to use, and then make it hard for people to find it?
- rglullis 4y ago
  Who said that is hard to find it? Is it hard compared to what? How much does it cost (in times and resources) to make it "easier" to find it? The people working on it are doing it for free (as in, it cost me literally nothing to download and install /e/OS on my phone) and you think you still feel entitled to get "good marketing" on top of it? If you think that the product is lacking in some part, how about you CONTRIBUTE to make it better instead of just diminishing the work of others? What a fucking lame attitude.
  - evilos 4y ago
    It's like if your buddy created an awesome website that provided a great free service and then called it jflasdjfjasdfjkereifsd.yzy You'd wonder they shot themselves in the foot like that. It would've been easy to give it a good name but instead they severely limited the potential of their hard work for seemingly no reason. It's not entitlement, it is confusion. Also why are you so confrontational?
    - rglullis 4y ago
      I don't need to type the address to use it. If the site is "awesome", I will use it regardless of the name.I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE NAME, I care about what it does and what are the guiding principles. I am confrontational because your "confusion" is just stupid concern trolling. Do you think that it is important to get more people to be less dependent on Big Tech? Then here is an operating system that works pretty well. This is what you need to be telling people, not how you think that the name is bad. Stop worrying about the "marketing", and just use and promote better alternatives. By being and acting self-conscious about something that does not matter, you are not collaborating at all.

gidorah 4y ago

GIMP really bothers me. It makes it really hard to recommend.