Hi,

29.01.2009 16:06, Foo wrote:
> Sorry, don't have the thread in my mail anymore, so new thread.
> 
> Today I got this snippet in the mail regarding permission to install  
> Bacula on a subcontractor's systems:
> 
> "Regarding `the count bacula', I need to escalate your request to my  
> colleagues in *** to see if it can co-exist with ***. I'll let you know."
> 
> Somehow that sounds ominous. Personally I appreciate the catchphrase's  
> humour, and apparently my counterpart above does too, but it also gives  
> the wrong impression regarding maturity (of the product) to his PHB.
> 
> If Bacula (or more importantly Bacula Systems) wants to be perceived as  
> professional, it needs to be acknowledged that engineering culture (read  
> humour) is not compatible with management/business culture. IMHO it's a  
> mistake to rely on the engineering layer's ability to sensibly filter this  
> to management, at least the 'sucks by night' catchphrase needlessly  
> complicates acceptance and has to go.

I still disagree :-)

When I'm talking with the management of a potential customer, I 
neither use the tag line, nor do we read over the website together... 
it's more that I offer a solution which can do this and that, works 
reliably as shown by some things, and so on. It's called Bacula, is 
open source, etc. pp.

Normally, that manager doesn't want to know more - when they have an 
IT department, I discuss the details with their admins. If they don't 
have an IT department, we (hopefully) outline how I can install an 
instance of it and prove them it's working reliably.

In the end, the management pays... but they never need to get in 
contact with the engineering culture, (un)intended jokes, or any puns.

In the few cases where management actually dived into Bacula that deep 
that we discussed the naming (I never was in a situation where the tag 
line was an issue) it usually was a very simple thing to explain (some 
of) the reason(s) for chosing that name.

In fact, if they want to talk about those things, they probably know a 
web server called "apache", whose name is also quite ridiculous. Or 
think about "Thunderbird" - that's a complete nonsense name if you 
want to relate it to the products function - Bacula, at least, refers 
to the actual function of the product.

Really, I don't see why the tag line can be a concern when doing 
business around Bacula. But I guess Bacula Systems has a good enough 
marketing staff, end they might eventually stumble upon this issue - 
then I'll have to know better, perhaps :-)

Arno

-- 
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
www.its-lehmann.de

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