Maybe it’s true that a “Rose by any other name still smells as sweet,” but not being able to easily pronounce the name of software is a big turn off to exploring it.

That’s true whether the name of your word processing program is “Espronceda” or “Microsoft Word” or “OpenOffice.org Writer”.

Now… unless you can read Spanish and are familiar with the digital literacy efforts of the local Regional government of Extremadura, Spain, you probably would not have recognized the name, “Espronceda” in the paragraph immediately above. You would have had absolutely no idea what that program did, and you probably thought that it wouldn’t be written in a language you could understand, so why bother?

My point exactly!

The ability to change and adapt is software libre’s ace in the hole

The name “Espronceda,” is the name that Extremadurans gave to their flavor of OpenOffice.org Writer. Extremadura is one of the seventeen Regions of Spain (The term “Region” in Spain is closely analogous to the term “Province” in Canada or “State” in the U.S.A.). Each Region has its own unique government, history, culture, and in many cases, its own language. The government of Extremadura has made digital literacy a prime policy priority. To speed the adoption of software libre in Extremadura, the officials there decided to rename OpenOffice.org Writer as Espronceda, after the famous Spanish poet, Jose de Espronceda.

It’s a beefy issue

This issue is big… very big! The name given to a software application is what simple end users like me and my six billion closest friends first encounter, and it shapes our view of the code and helps us to answer the biggest questions that a simple end user asks when facing a new application for the first time: “Why should I use this code?”, “How do I use this code?” and “Why should I care? Isn’t a computer just like a toaster?”

The ability to change and adapt is software libre’s ace in the hole. As a disruptive technology, software libre relies on disruptive distribution channels, such as the free telecentros in Sao Paulo, Brazil, or the public libraries in Scotland. These channels expose new users to an application without a sale occurring. Many of the users of the 120 Sao Paulo telecentros do not own computers themselves. Indeed, some of them don’t even have a reliable electricity supply. The telecentros are located in the heart of the poorest favelas (slums) which ring Sao Paulo, a city of sixteen million souls. Likewise, the Extremaduran telecenters service typically underserved users who, for what ever reason, are too intimidated or poor to have a computer in their homes. Similarly, the Scottish libraries circulate copies of OpenOffice.org to those who cannot afford Microsoft Office.

Proprietary software companies have created the impression that it is improper to change the names of applications, and have locked down the code so that localization is not possible without the source code

This is a huge market we’re talking about

Of those six billion closest friends to which I was referring above, only about a billion live in countries with average annual incomes in excess of US$10,000.00. The remaining five billion live in countries well below that annual average. The ability of users in those countries to localize software libre into their own languages represents a huge advantage for free software. Proprietary software companies have created the impression that it is improper to change the names of applications, and have locked down the code so that localization is not possible without the source code. This practice shifts the cost of localizing to these companies; whereas companies such as Sun and Novell will gain the benefit from the externalization of some of the localization costs to the shoulders of the local communities, who are the masters of their local dialects, anyway.

The local Extremaduran government was in a better position to choose the name of Espronceda for its version of Writer than was Sun Microsystems or the global OpenOffice.org community. Each local community is in the best position to understand what will make sense for its residents. Leaders in those communities best understand how to go about the process of winning “buy-in” from local users, and what potential names best reflect the local cultural proclivities for approaching a novel technology.

Penguinistas are familiar with the advantage of modular interfaces when it comes to fitting pieces of technology together, but it’s also helpful to see the GUI itself as a key modular strength of software libre. This view might seem rather straightforward, but it’s actually rather contentious and difficult to implement in practice. Michael Robertson, CEO of Linspire, recently had a conversation on the English language OpenOffice.org marketing list about this issue with Bruce Byfield, an independent columnist and contributor to the OpenOffice.org project, and author of a user manual for OpenOffice.org.

Bruce Byfield felt that while it was a good thing for Linspire to pursue widespread proliferation of the code (what Linspire humorously calls “flouridation”), mere flouridation without more deliberate education was not enough:

“ As for the comments about [Linspire] vendor lock-in, they refer specifically to Linspire’s re-labelling of software packages for the purposes of branding, and—so far as I can see—an absence of any mention of antecedents in its general advertising and presentation of packages. I know a number of non-geeks, for example, who are under the impression that Linspire is a completely new operating system, rather than an adaptation of GNU/Linux in general and Debian in particular. While this re-branding makes sense in commercial marketing, I observe that it does not play well in free software/open source communities, where credit is often the only reward for effort.” (Bruce Byfield, 2004/10/15, OOo Marketing list server, http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=17344)

Michael Robertson replied by saying that the market of folks who care about the philosophy of their computer software has been taped out, and that the bulk of remaining potential customers are only interested in out-of-the-box functionality:

“You are right we do not emphasize the philosophy. I wouldn’t say we emphasize the technology either. We emphasize the benefit to the end user/retailer/OEM and to all parties it revolves around economics. The vast majority of OEMs and retailers don’t care about the philosophy. They only care if there’s a chance for them to make money. If there’s no chance then they don’t carry the product, it’s that simple. If you start talking to Walmart about philosophy you will quickly be escorted out of the office. And they are not unique among major distributors or retailers that make business decisions based on economics. It has nothing to do with whether they agree or disagree with the philosophy behind free software it’s just that’s not how they make decisions. So how do you win them over? You have to make it economically beneficial for them to carry your products.” (Michael Robertson, 2004/10/15, OOo Marketing list server. http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=17357)