Re: The "What is GNOME?" Answer

[John Williams <jwilliams business otago ac nz>]

On Thu, 2004-03-11 at 17:56 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:

> <quote who="John Williams">
>
> > But, again, we are going about this in the _wrong way_ again.  We need
> > the top management (Foundation board I suppose) to define what the
> > message they want to send is; and then the creative types can think of
> > ways to make it memorable and evocative.
>
> I didn't really want to do this with my Board hat on, because the Board is
> definitely *not* "top management" of GNOME. :-) If we come up with something
> cool, we can ask the Board to give its blessing.
Who is "top management" of GNOME?  Who decides whether to proceed with
marketing decisions?


> Rather than a pithy marketing slogan, I'm looking for an honest, informative
> answer for when people ask us "What is GNOME?" 
Good! That is really reassuring.

> I used the examples of family
> and business people in my first mail. If your Mum, a client, or your CTO ask
> "What is GNOME?", you wouldn't realistically answer, "GNOME! The Choice of
> the GNU Generation!" ;-)
Check.

> Our current answer (which was changed on some of our webpages), which I'm
> inclined to stick with if no one can come up with something more informative
> and/or inspirational, is:
>
>   "The GNOME Project is an effort to create a complete, free and easy-to-use
>   desktop environment for users, as well as a powerful application
>   development framework for software developers."
Personally, the only change I would make is to cast it as a completed
goal, rather than an effort. (Simply delete "an effort to create".)

If we _really_ want to be simple, I would replace "desktop environment"
with "graphical environment and set of applications".

I take it we don't need to emphasise that it is only for Unix-like OSes?