Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Murray Cumming wrote:
> >  So why does GNOME get 
> > so stuck on "the desktop" (by which we mean "the 
> > enterprisey/thinclienty/unixy desktop") and act like everything else is 
> > some kind of distraction?
>
> Really, lots of people are trying lots of other stuff, because people
> generally share your thoughts on this. It's just not quite there yet.
> Plus, we don't know how to do or fund web-based services.
>
> Personally I think we could go mass market by having a great creativity
> platform that provided an easy way into the new world of easily-created
> and easily-mashed-together free(dom) audio and video. Annodex feels key
> to this:
> http://www.annodex.org/
>
> It could be way more than iLife by joining us all together.

It's a good line of thought. What's missing in my mind is 1) who is it 
that wants to enter the new world of audio/video creativity, and why 
aren't they already there 2) what else do they want 3) what else are 
they already using 4) what is the shortest (or at least "a short") path 
to offering them this new world of creativity.

One thing is to not presuppose that it involves Linux/GNOME/"a 
desktop"/"a PC" at least in the historical sense of those things.

The problem statement / project definition should not be "how do we get 
people to want a desktop" it's "how do we make what people want"

> > Because the current audiences ain't gonna reach the 10x10 goal, I assure 
> > you of that.
>
> We can meet the needs of people who want a transition away from a
> corporate Windows desktop, while at the same time creating a radically
> better life experience. Let's encourage the great new stuff that's
> happening without discouraging the great old stuff.

Please don't think I'm discouraging the old stuff. On the contrary, I'd 
like to list it more explicitly (as I've done in several of this mails) 
and get better focus on it. It's just as terrible for our thin client 
deployments to get dragged along with decisions for some other audience, 
as the vice versa.

> > There's also Windows apps, "embedded" (focused?) devices, online 
> > services, all kinds of stuff that could serve the goal of bringing an 
> > open source computing platform to the general public.
>
> You of all people know that we do need to be at least a little focused.

To me there are two useful levels of "mission statement"; the very high 
level, values/aspirations kind of goal like "completely open source 
platform for the general public" and the very specific kind of goal like 
"enable young artists to mash-up and share audio and video with ease"

(I listed a few very specific goals of that nature that I think the 
current "desktop release" embodies in a mail a few minutes ago.)

In the middle is the bad kind of goal; "make a desktop," "make an office 
suite," "write some software"

To continue my car analogy; at the highest level you have the mission of 
the whole project - how is SAAB different from Toyota is the question. 
How is GNOME different from Microsoft, Google, Ubuntu, Red Hat, KDE, 
MySpace.

At the lowest level you have the specific subprojects; "a car for young 
people who love cars and want to drive fast, but don't have a lot of 
money" or "a car for mid-life-crisis men with lots of cash who want to 
show off their social status and good taste" or what have you.

But the not-useful level is "let's make a car" or worse, "let's make a 
car that has a V-8 engine and uses our new manufacturing process" (that 
would be "let's write some stuff in Python" or "let's do something that 
involves a desktop" for example).

It's this middle/vague, or alternatively wrong (tech rather than 
audience/benefit), level of focus that tends to be problematic.

Havoc