http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrFeatures - improving page

[Ian Clatworthy]

Jari Aalto wrote:
> Ian Clatworthy <ian.clatworthy at canonical.com> writes:
> 
>> I'd rather not change that. "You/we" makes it more personal...
> 
> I understand that this may be cultural thing, because in the US this can
> be seen in frequent use. But I'm not sure that is true elsewhere unless
> we talk about marketting.

Understood. The US/UK is certainly a huge target market though. As a
semi-related data point, the 2009 Git User Survey
(http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSurvey2009) of 4000 users suggests 40% of
those surveyed are either in the USA or in the UK. Canada, Australia and
other Commonwealth countries push the percentage over 50% so I feel
"You/we" will be acceptable to a majority of potential readers.

Marketing. Hmm. After the honest mistakes I made in trying to "market"
Bazaar 1.0, I have no interest in trying to market Bazaar 2.0. I've come
to the conclusion that the best "marketing" material is high quality
user documentation and I'd rather be writing a "Bazaar Explorer User
Guide" right now that further tweaking this page (or the new web site
for that matter).

> There
> are of course different kind of people visiting the bazaar-vcs.org:
> 
> - New users
> - Corporations
> - Possible switchers that have background from VCSs
> 
> Who is the primary target group?

Open source projects and companies still using central VCS tools.
Individuals using Git and Mercurial for personal projects are the
secondary, much smaller, target audience. Note that open source projects
who have already selected another DVCS tool are definitely not the
audience IMO. They may wish they had picked Bazaar (now that our
scalability issues are arguably behind us) but they won't change any
time soon.

Some things to note:

1. The vast majority of development teams, particularly commercial ones,
   are still using central VCS tools. Think 70-80% of developers.

2. Bazaar has been far more successful in the commercial space than we
   expected (and most list readers realise?). There's a huge silent
   majority who never comment and never ask for advice publicly. But
   they are there and important community members.

All I mean by that is that open source developers on Linux are far more
vocal than the majority. I wonder how many of the 35 thousand users who
downloaded bzr 1.13 for Windows will ever post to this list? Maybe 0.1%
at an upper limit.

> What did you think about this proposal?
> 
>        Unique. Bazaar has several features that most other tools do
>         not. These include proper rename tracking, transparent foreign
>         branches and direct Launchpad integration. See below for
>         details.
> 
>     =>
> 
>      *  Unique. Feature unique to Bazaar include proper rename tracking,
>         transparent foreign branches and direct Launchpad integration.
>         See below for details.
> 
> And others?

In terms of content, I'm cautious about claiming any particular feature
is unique. I don't know Darcs, Monotone, Perforce, ClearCase, etc. to
know that for a fact. In terms of tone, I honestly don't think the
rewording you're suggesting gains anything, though I'm clearly ignorant
about many cultures and how best to phrase text in a universally
acceptable way.

Let me stress that this is a community wiki and you're welcome to change
 text. The driving question in my mind is: How many more users will make
the decision to try Bazaar if we change those words? There may well be
quite a few - I can't say for sure but I suspect the number is small.
OTOH, *I* certainly can't polish this page forever and I'm happy enough
with the text as it stands. (Some images would make it a little more
interesting though!)

Ian C.