Re: Marketing list action: Market Research for GNOME and GNU/Linux

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 08:59:46 +1300
"John Williams" <JWilliams business otago ac nz> wrote:

[snip]
> I see this group as a sector/segment of derived demand.  As a guess, I
> would say that the major factor that would influence their desire to
> develop FOSS is the number of (potential) users (based on both
> commercial and potlach motivations).  Maybe all the developers out
> there could comment on this?  (I have only written one or two toy
> apps.)  If so, and market growth is the goal, we can grow (3) simply
> by growing(2).  The question is: 
>
> Is the current initial hurdle of developing for Linux (or GNOME) the
> limiting factor (in number of developers developing for Linux), or is
> the potential reward (whatever that is) the limiting factor? (Or
> both?)

A differentiation might be useful:

 * Indirectly derived demand: Low number of companies developing for
    GNOME Linux, thus less professional developers that spend the whole
    day on contributing.
 * Directly derived demand: Number of developers contributing.
    ("Scratch the own itch")

But the cost/efforts side should be noted, also:

 * If getting used to the platform is expensive (needs a lot of time),
developers are likely to scratch their own itch for KDE or Microsoft
Windows or Apple.

GNOME's central problem seems to be free riding: Why spend efforts into
improving GNOME if others do this, already? (Novell, RedHat, Sun)

[snip]
> Aw, shucks :-)  Thanks!  No, I hadn't considered them.  I was being a
> myopic user.  I suppose that my position now is: probably forget (4).
> Maybe forget (I mean, do not concentrate on) (3).   
>
> My reasoning for choosing not to focus on (3) is this.  I used to be
> an OS/2 user.  I was driven to OS/2 because I was sick of Windows
> crashing and corrupting/losing my data.  OS/2 was great.  (BTW: and
> the Workplace Shell remains the best GUI I have ever used.)  But there
> were no applications.  I ended up using many Unix/Linux applications
> that were ported to OS/2, just to get my work done.  I ended up using
> so many Linux apps that I thought I'd try Linux.  So I did, and never
> looked back, really.

Perfect example for Linux users: Boiled together from other platforms
that were trashed by the Microsoft Monopoly. I still miss my Win95
explorer.

> Here is my point: OS/2 failed because no-one was developing for OS/2.
> Why not?  There were no users.  IBM, IIRC, was bending over backwards
> to help developers get started.  But they had no motivation.  "Aha!",
> you may say.  "But that was commercial software developers.  FOSS
> developers have different motivations."  I am curious as to whether
> this is true, in the sense that the payoff for _any_ developer is, in
> a real sense, that they are creating something useful that lots of
> people will use, and enjoy using.
>
> Rant, rant, rant.  I am getting a bit off-topic, I think. 

Nice example of the network economics we operate in: 
No apps -> No users -> No apps.
No hardware -> No users -> No hardware.

Again, this points to what the central goal of our efforts should be:
More users!

These users should appear in a statistic, otherwise nobody else sees the
need to engage in GNOME Linux programming.

Additionally, they should not been catched in network economics, yet.

This means:
 * Users with low income (makes no sense running DOOM3 without a proper
    and expensive grafic card).
 * Users without much experience (very young people to prevent "I miss
    my OS/2, Win95, BeOS, Amiga, etc" situations.)
 * Users with very special needs (university departments, for example).

> BTW, Claus mentioned that a possible answer to the "Who is 'we'?"
> question is "The GNOME foundation".  I seem to remember that this was
> discussed in the past, but I forget what the outcome was.

GNOME marketing list members should not use the term "we", IMHO, because
depending on context it might mean:

* GNOME foundation
* GNOME developers
* GNOME community
* GNOME marketing list
* GNOME users

The GNOME foundation is the only institution GNOME got. In the end, they
must decide about money, for example.

Other arguments are rather philosophical, IMHO. :-)


Claus