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That was completely unnecessary. Never did he mention "marketing asshats" exercising some amount of control over any git developer. He mentioned that GitHub a

by mileszs 18y ago

That was completely unnecessary. Never did he mention "marketing asshats" exercising some amount of control over any git developer. He mentioned that GitHub acts as free marketing for git. For git users, git getting increased attention is a benefit. More projects using git is a benefit. More hackers hacking on git is a benefit. More tools built around git is a benefit. Your anger is grossly misplaced, and really lacks any use in this conversation.

blasdel 18y ago
I was reacting to his desire for more open source projects to have "a) a marketing plan and b) a visual identity and c) a site that was designed to sell the product", the trappings of something you have to sell to people. One of the things I love most about communal open source software is that you don't have to push it on anyone -- if they find it and like it, good for them! git does benefit from network effect more than most software, but for a lot of itch-scratching open source projects, having the kind of end-users that are brought in by marketing is a negative. They require lots of help, which supports the introduction of middlemen, and drags on the developers until the community hits a critical mass. Just having more users is not an absolute good, especially when they're the type of users you attract only with shiny marketing.
- petercooper 18y ago
  having the kind of end-users that are brought in by marketing is a negative. They require lots of help, which supports the introduction of middlemen, and drags on the developers until the community hits a critical mass. The network effect would indicate that the bigger the "tribe" around something the better. Not always, but for something that could benefit thousands, it's usually better if those thousands know about it rather than it being a closet technology / product / whatever. having the kind of end-users that are brought in by marketing is a negative Marketing seems to be a dirty word for you. In reality, it's a word much like "economics" in that even if you don't agree with it, you're experiencing it every day. You might think marketing is some evil, advertising-dominated thing, but really it's just the economics of attention. Having a descriptive title on a Web site is "marketing" at some level, and that's how a lot of people will find you, through Google searches, etc.. yet I doubt most project maintainers consider this "marketing."
  - kragen 18y ago
    I think there's an interesting question here: where does simple communication become marketing? We're talking about a situation where a person A is talking to a person B about some subject S. I think that for this communication to be reasonably described as "A marketing S to B", we need most of these to be true: 1. A stands to gain financially from B liking S; 2. A wants B to like S; 3. A chooses the things they say to B about S with the goal in mind of influencing B to like S — perhaps they emphasize positive aspects of S, downplay or don't mention negative aspects, suppress whatever personal doubts they may have about S, etc. Now, of course, there are marketing people who would like to claim that any communication between any two people is an instance of "marketing", but that is at odds with they way the term is commonly used, and I think this is because those people are marketing marketing. Usually when something is described as "marketing", three or at least two of the above criteria are true, in the opinion of the speaker. None of these three items are necessarily true of "having a descriptive title on a Web [sic] site". Item 3 is often a result of item 2, which is often a result of item 1. Even in the rare case that these relationships don't hold, there's always the temptation to proceed from one to the next. The thing I want to point out is that item 3 is very much at odds with basic norms of honest discourse, and when people do it, they make it harder for other people to discover the truth about things. When some of the participants in a conversation have an agenda of influencing others' opinions in favor of some issue, it undermines any confidence in conclusions you can draw from the conversation. I think that's why so many people hate marketing: it creates a constant temptation to dishonesty, most marketers succumb to it at least a little, and that severely damages the quality of discourse in conversations that contain marketers.
    - petercooper 18y ago
      None of these three items are necessarily true of "having a descriptive title on a Web [sic] site". Why not? Having a properly worded title could be the difference between having 100 people find your project or 1000 people find it. Those people are then the difference between you getting consulting gigs for whatever you invented or not. With your criteria you could argue that Ruby on Rails (the original topic a few posts up) could not possibly be "marketed" as the developers did not "gain financially" from people using it, but in an indirect way they certainly did - conferences, prestige (non-financial), consulting gigs, book deals, and so forth. Take the word "financially" out of your criteria, however, to cover these open source cases and nearly all communications is marketing. After all, when I first met my now-wife, I stood to gain if she liked me, I wanted her to like me, and I certainly played up on my good points. The thing I want to point out is that item 3 is very much at odds with basic norms of honest discourse Honest discourse, perhaps, but most day to day discourse is not honest. On the whole, people will play up positive aspects of things they like and downplay negative aspects that work against them or things they have a high opinion of. I think that's why so many people hate marketing: it creates a constant temptation to dishonesty, most marketers succumb to it at least a little, and that severely damages the quality of discourse in conversations that contain marketers. I'd say that the majority of conversation has that quality. But most people don't hate conversation, even though it is typically riddled with manipulation and selective truths (usually in a quite non-malicious way.. few husbands are really going to tell the wife their butt does look big in those jeans..).

by mileszs 18y ago

blasdel 18y ago

I was reacting to his desire for more open source projects to have "a) a marketing plan and b) a visual identity and c) a site that was designed to sell the product", the trappings of something you have to sell to people. One of the things I love most about communal open source software is that you don't have to push it on anyone -- if they find it and like it, good for them! git does benefit from network effect more than most software, but for a lot of itch-scratching open source projects, having the kind of end-users that are brought in by marketing is a negative. They require lots of help, which supports the introduction of middlemen, and drags on the developers until the community hits a critical mass. Just having more users is not an absolute good, especially when they're the type of users you attract only with shiny marketing.

petercooper 18y ago
having the kind of end-users that are brought in by marketing is a negative. They require lots of help, which supports the introduction of middlemen, and drags on the developers until the community hits a critical mass. The network effect would indicate that the bigger the "tribe" around something the better. Not always, but for something that could benefit thousands, it's usually better if those thousands know about it rather than it being a closet technology / product / whatever. having the kind of end-users that are brought in by marketing is a negative Marketing seems to be a dirty word for you. In reality, it's a word much like "economics" in that even if you don't agree with it, you're experiencing it every day. You might think marketing is some evil, advertising-dominated thing, but really it's just the economics of attention. Having a descriptive title on a Web site is "marketing" at some level, and that's how a lot of people will find you, through Google searches, etc.. yet I doubt most project maintainers consider this "marketing."
- kragen 18y ago
  I think there's an interesting question here: where does simple communication become marketing? We're talking about a situation where a person A is talking to a person B about some subject S. I think that for this communication to be reasonably described as "A marketing S to B", we need most of these to be true: 1. A stands to gain financially from B liking S; 2. A wants B to like S; 3. A chooses the things they say to B about S with the goal in mind of influencing B to like S — perhaps they emphasize positive aspects of S, downplay or don't mention negative aspects, suppress whatever personal doubts they may have about S, etc. Now, of course, there are marketing people who would like to claim that any communication between any two people is an instance of "marketing", but that is at odds with they way the term is commonly used, and I think this is because those people are marketing marketing. Usually when something is described as "marketing", three or at least two of the above criteria are true, in the opinion of the speaker. None of these three items are necessarily true of "having a descriptive title on a Web [sic] site". Item 3 is often a result of item 2, which is often a result of item 1. Even in the rare case that these relationships don't hold, there's always the temptation to proceed from one to the next. The thing I want to point out is that item 3 is very much at odds with basic norms of honest discourse, and when people do it, they make it harder for other people to discover the truth about things. When some of the participants in a conversation have an agenda of influencing others' opinions in favor of some issue, it undermines any confidence in conclusions you can draw from the conversation. I think that's why so many people hate marketing: it creates a constant temptation to dishonesty, most marketers succumb to it at least a little, and that severely damages the quality of discourse in conversations that contain marketers.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    None of these three items are necessarily true of "having a descriptive title on a Web [sic] site". Why not? Having a properly worded title could be the difference between having 100 people find your project or 1000 people find it. Those people are then the difference between you getting consulting gigs for whatever you invented or not. With your criteria you could argue that Ruby on Rails (the original topic a few posts up) could not possibly be "marketed" as the developers did not "gain financially" from people using it, but in an indirect way they certainly did - conferences, prestige (non-financial), consulting gigs, book deals, and so forth. Take the word "financially" out of your criteria, however, to cover these open source cases and nearly all communications is marketing. After all, when I first met my now-wife, I stood to gain if she liked me, I wanted her to like me, and I certainly played up on my good points. The thing I want to point out is that item 3 is very much at odds with basic norms of honest discourse Honest discourse, perhaps, but most day to day discourse is not honest. On the whole, people will play up positive aspects of things they like and downplay negative aspects that work against them or things they have a high opinion of. I think that's why so many people hate marketing: it creates a constant temptation to dishonesty, most marketers succumb to it at least a little, and that severely damages the quality of discourse in conversations that contain marketers. I'd say that the majority of conversation has that quality. But most people don't hate conversation, even though it is typically riddled with manipulation and selective truths (usually in a quite non-malicious way.. few husbands are really going to tell the wife their butt does look big in those jeans..).