Marketing beats quality • Hacker News Board

Re: Marketing beats quality

#11

Post by cpks » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 12:55 PM UTC

xixi77 wrote: post #8

hiphopyo wrote: post #6

Another example of this is the popularity of Linux (marketing) over OpenBSD (quality).

and what exactly was the marketing trick that allowed Linux to beat OpenBSD, in your opinion?

Linux had a much more friendly and welcoming community attitude. OpenBSD/NetBSD developers had a bit of an anal-retentive BOFH streak to them. Linus used strong language, but he was very easy-going. He invited folks in, and allowed code from immature developers in, so long as the interfaces were right. Turned out that build a much bigger developer community. It also turned out that ability to code today is not indicative of ability to code five years from now; many of the relatively immature folks who contributed to Linux early got really good over time.

Ultimately, the larger developer base allowed Linux quality to beat OpenBSD quality as well.

Good marketing is usually not a trick.

Re: Marketing beats quality

#12

Post by marksteve » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 1:05 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #7

I'm not sure this has much to do with either quality or marketing. It's about stealing credit and whims of the internet in making things popular.

It seemed to me that aside from poor timing, people upvoted it because it used flappy bird assets. I guess quality isn't the best word but I picked the phrase from a presentation I recently read and it sounded appropriate :)

Re: Marketing beats quality

#13

Post by dieulot » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 1:38 PM UTC

Marketing is definitely important here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023467 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7201353 good timing + HN-specific introduction on this one: 300+ upvotes, made #1). But I think there’s at least another factor here: his version is more fun, because it’s faster-paced and has better graphics (obviously). So I’d say it’s also about more quality. Being more fun is more important than not being a rip-off in relation to quality too.

I totally understand why you’re pissed off, but I recommend trying (it’s not always trivial) to see further than “it’s all marketing”. Most of the time there are other factors at play, and nothing but good things come when you get to know some of them.

Re: Marketing beats quality

#14

Post by marksteve » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 2:20 PM UTC

dieulot wrote: post #13

Marketing is definitely important here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023467 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7201353 good timing + HN-specific introduction on this one: 300+ upvotes, made #1). But I think there’s at least another factor here: his version is more fun, because it’s faster-paced and has better graphics (obviously). So I’d say it’s also about more quality . Being more fun is more importan…

I'd be less annoyed if his version was indeed better but he just replaced the graphics and bumped the physics values. So I can't accept that his version was "more fun".

But I agree that there are things I didn't consider. And I learned a lot because of this event.

Re: Marketing beats quality

#15

Post by lazyjones » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 3:39 PM UTC

cpks wrote: post #11

xixi77 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and what exactly was the marketing trick that allowed Linux to beat OpenBSD, in your opinion?

Linux had a much more friendly and welcoming community attitude. OpenBSD/NetBSD developers had a bit of an anal-retentive BOFH streak to them. Linus used strong language, but he was very easy-going. He invited folks in, and allowed code from immature developers in, so long as the interfaces were right. Turned out that build a much bigger developer community. It also turned out that ability to code today is not indica…

> Linux had a much more friendly and welcoming community attitude. OpenBSD/NetBSD developers had a bit of an anal-retentive BOFH streak to them

That may have played a role in this, but not a major one. What probably contributed most to the success of Linux was the commercial redistribution and accompanying marketing efforts by companies like SuSE (they even sent free CD sets to unimportant Open Source developers, including me) and Red Hat.