One rule of marketing is to test your campaigns before launching them. This is so basic that those who fail to do so will fail in spectacular ways.

Sounds like we are talking about Sun again.

We are. This morning I received a quasi-spam from Sun promoting Glassfish, their Open Source web application platform. Since I have been delinquent on studying Glassfish and seeing where in the web app ecosystem it fits, I immediately jumped to the Sun Microsystems web site.

Sure as sin Glassfish was not only prominently displayed in the left side menu of downloadable goodies, the home page banner was a big blue ocean with a glass fish swimming therein. I clicked into the download menu and as expected there was a “learn more” link. So far so good.

The link points into the Java development web site … to a blank page. “Learn more by learning nothing!”

Now I’ve bungled a thing or two before – small things like a marriage and the overthrow of a small, third world government. But not testing links from your home page, not assuring that the linked web page/site is in code lockdown, or rushing a promo email into the wild are all signs of an organization not executing well internally. We know Sun suffers from ideological product initiative, and that is tragic enough. But failing to satisfy prospects looking at free software removes any belief that quality and support exist behind the products.