prioritization [was Re: Call for a Gnome Media Center]

["Luis Villa" <luis tieguy org>]

On 2/14/07, Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-02-14 at 11:27 -0500, Luis Villa wrote:
> > [I'll note that the direction the rest of this thread has gone is
> > indicative of why I'm very, very pessimistic about the long-term
> > health of GNOME right now. Take this as a mild attempt to get back on
> > track by talking about users and user experience instead of
> > capitalization of directories which users should never see anyway, and
> > which has previously been discussed repeatedly, endlessly and without
> > resolution.]
>
> It's not just about Capitalization. It's about localization. Getting it
> wrong will upset significant amounts of people for a long time.
>
> The answer is not to ignore the difficult decision. It needs to be
> presented as a choice between various pros and cons, with a decision
> being made for one choice or the other, clearly stating that we believe
> one set of disadvantages is not as bad as another. Then moving on.
>
> Dealing with complex issues properly doesn't mean that we are incapable
> of deciding. Quick decisions often lead to pain and misunderstanding. We
> are somewhere in the middle.

The discussion is of course important, which is why we've had it
repeatedly, and it is hard, which is why we've had it repeatedly and
not solved it.

But we've devoted something like thirty emails in this thread alone to
it, with no signs of it slowing, plus (IIRC) something like seventy
emails the last time, and who knows how many prior to that.

And we've devoted less than ten emails to the topic that started the
thread- an idea which would massively and substantively improve our
user experience and broaden our impact, and *which Christian has
correctly pointed out will have failed if people ever see a file
heirarchy*.

So... fine. I'll grant that it is important. Go ahead, discuss it.

My problem is in continuing to discuss it 5-10 times as much as we're
discussing actually moving us forward, helping our users, and striking
at our competitors.

While we're busy having that discussion, and not discussing media
centers, Apple and Microsoft are busy developing Apple TV and Xbox and
kicking our asses in yet another area.

Luis

P.S. To put it another way, I recall from our last discussion of this
that Apple hasn't solved it either. And I agree that it sucks. And in
the meantime, while it has sucked, they've settled on ~/Music, moved
on, worked on iTunes, and iTunes has taken over the world. The
localization (or lack thereof) of ~/Music has not hurt them, because
they are writing awesome software. This discussion is completely
failing to help us write awesome software.