Blue GNU has launched a simple poll aimed at understanding whether and how FOSS projects market themselves. The 4-week project is an effort to help the community understand marketing and its impact on the progress of various projects.

Blue GNU is polling FOSS developers over the next 4 weeks to find out whether and how they market their projects. The poll seeks to find out how many projects actively market themselves and how many rely solely on word-of-mouth advertising as their whole marketing campaign. While some blame philosophical in-fighting, others blame the poor quality of some projects, and still others blame the lack of backing by major corporations. Yet, many projects seem to go unnoticed, not because they aren't high quality, but because they aren't good at marketing.

The most commonly-held view of Microsoft is that they are much better at marketing than at developing high-quality software. Between their shrewd marketing and loathsome sales tactics, they have managed to rack up quite a business for themselves. Much of this has led many to mistakenly assume that marketing is one step below statistics, after the lies and damn lies. Yet, marketing is a necessary and useful tool, if used judiciously.

Blue GNU hopes to learn developers' views toward marketing, as well as how actively they work to promote their own projects. Blue GNU's publisher, Don Parris, will reveal the results of the survey at the upcoming Ohio LinuxFest, as part of a presentation, titled Marketing FOSS.

To participate in the simple poll Developers will need to register on the Blue GNU site (no cost). Participants can add comments to help clarify their votes, and share what project(s) they represent.