Why Science?

Science is taught at universities, and universities provide most of the things we need for successfully distributing the GNOME ScienceCD:

• Universities are very often concentrated on a large campus, or at least their different faculties have their own buildings.
• Universities are likely to run computers - depending on the faculty in question, some more, some less. [Many universities have large labs for semi-public consumption, which have minimal software needs- printing, web browsing, some word processing. These are ideal targets for GNOME deployments, assuming we get lockdown working.]
• Universities often have own media: student journals, research journals, black boards for posters, etc.
• Universities have rooms in several different sizes, often accessible for special events such as Install feasts.
• Universities have often good Internet access, established email systems, etc.
• Universities are likely to have had other Operating Systems: UNIX in most cases, but sometimes also Apple Macintosh, and other OSes. Their computer-staff (administrators) is likely to have UNIX or even Linux experience.
• Universities are seldom and easy to research: Even for the United States, their number may be large but countable. Lists and thus To do lists are easy to make.
• Universities are public: Their addresses are probably already indexed somewhere. It's easy to search them, and reformat the lists for our needs.
• Universities often affect the towns they are located at, by affecting local businesses: Most important are probably bars, but also computer shops may be orientated towards students needs.
• Universities provide a special institution where the target groups comes to us: Students!

The students of the world thus form an easy to reach target group:

• They are young, depending on the country 17 to 28.
• They are mixed: We can expect men and women to be there, at least in most cases.
• They are potentially unexperienced with computer: The beginning of their studies are often the reason to buy a computer.
• They usually have only a small amount of money available.
• They are potential decision makers of tomorrow: Students are likely to get good jobs in governments, business, and research. They eventually make buying decisions in ten or fifteen years.
• They have known social contacts, namely other students. Word-of-month and sharing experiences about installation issues and help among them is likely to work on its own.
• They are addressed by a rather small number of special interest media: The above mentioned university's journals, but also national journals for students, or special issues of general interest media: Think "The countries Top 100 universities" or "Where should you start studying?" of Forbes and the like.
• They have parents which are often well situated, eventually own a computer, but rely on their children to set it up, and keep it running.
• They have pre-university social contacts (think high school or the national equivalent) that may spread the word about Linux and GNOME to other groups.
• They have often special computing needs that are easy to address from the FOSS point of view: Well-documented, well-understood, and unlikely to be patented.
• Their special computing needs are separate: We can address them one after the other.
• A lot of existing Linux and GNOME users are studying, or did study. They are able to organize GNOME marketing locally!
• Special events are often organized for beginning students. These events can be used for local GNOME advocates to promote GNOME and Linux.

There are some more reasons that make universities, and especially students a group worth to talk to:

• UNIX has had a strong influence in universities, and among students, but lost it because of the competition of the big UNIX vendors.
• A lot of FOSS was invented in universities, most importantly the GNU project and the Linux kernel, but also others.

We can safely say that universities, and their students, have always been prime territory for UNIX and Linux.

However, there are also some caveats:

• Some students may have established needs we can not address yet: Gamers and artwork/3D designers. Especially gamers are likely to try to counter our efforts.
• Some students may be very experienced with Microsoft Windows but without experience with any other Operating System. They may mistake Windows with Computers in general, and are likely to try to counter our efforts.
• Teaching staff in some faculties have established contacts with the Microsoft cooperation - especially in the computer science departments. They are unlikely to support a switch, and may even try to counter our efforts.

Faculties with strong Microsoft orientation, and faculties addressing design (ie. Mac users) can easily be ignored in the beginning, and we should do so. Possible actions of the remaining rest will only be word-of-mouth and should not be a large problem.