In the wake of the Firefox EULA issue, the well-known GNU/Linux news accumulation website, Linux Today, ran a very short editorial which came to the rather hurried conclusion that the free operating system does not need what it characterised as "slick marketing."

In a recent post I wrote called "Linux has no marketing, but what if it did?" I made the point that with Microsoft's Windows 7 OS coming out on October 22nd, there will be a blitz of marketing around it, and noted that there never is any such blitz promoting Linux.

Now while I'm no self proclaimed marketing guru (Actually, I really suck at marketing), I am fairly versed in the simple science of economics. And since the two of them (marketing and economics) are more or less tied together, you have to have mastery of both if you want to succeed. And that's the way it is with Linux.

Most Linux adepts will agree Linux could have a higher market share than it does today, if it had been marketed more effectively in the past. Therefore, lots of those adepts stress “Linux needs more marketing!”

Sam Varghese is a columnist for the IT Wire website who likes Ubuntu and apparently has great respect for Mark Shuttleworth. He writes opinion pieces that I often disagree with but he most certainly is entitled to his opinion. He has now, on three separate occasions this year, written pieces which are harshly critical of Ubuntu's detractors.

Hal Steger and Alberto Onetti - both of mobile open-source leader Funambol - discuss open-source marketing in the Enterprise Open Source Journal. Well worth a read, especially for those who persist in believing that open source succeeds in the absence of good marketing. In fact, real commercial success in open source comes as a direct result of savvy marketing.

Novell markets Microsoft software along with its own and Novell's CMO talks about experimentation with viral marketing

Microsoft is giving awards to marketing people who help its fight against GNU/Linux (and Free software in general)

One of the discussions we had during the marketing and outreach session is whether the marketing should emphasize "Free" or emphasize the benefits of GNOME.