What are our goals? (was: Re: [Fwd: Re: New supporter] )

[Thilo Pfennig <tp alternativ net>]

Besides the 10x10.

What are our goals. With "we" i mean supporters/developers and users?

I would say: make the best Desktop available. Be better than the others.
Do we have a concrete audience? Why are we using GNOME instead of X,Y,Z?
As a user I also would say: If there would be a better desktop I would
switch. I don't see anything better right now. To be able to market
GNOME it is good to know the pros and cons.

What is GNOME btw? What if I use the GNOME desktop and a non-GNOME (KDE)
application? Am I a GNOME user or a KDE user? And if I would use KDE and
use GNOME-applications? So: What is a GNOME user? I only came across the
question that was posed what a GNOME application is. But I think that
this often does not matter for the user (more important for programers
and GNOME foundation).

What importance does freedesktop has for GNOME? If we want to reach a
goal like 10x10 would this mean to reach that goals by all means
necessary (even harm KDE?)?

I believe that with the growth of a common denominator (via freedesktop,
etc.) both desktops will gain success. This could mean that GNOME,
although it sure should define its own goals maybe shopuld consider to
do marketing together with KDE and other packages.

What is the current situation with OpenOffice.org? I got a very mixes
picture. On the one hand there is the Gnome-Office project which consist
of Abiword and Gnumeric (right?). On the other hand Openoffice.org is
not GNOME but is somehow an important part in argumentation, but not
really loved  by GNOME people? Same with Mozilla. Mozilla is somehow
essential and there is cooperation, but the goals are ver different.
There are some nasty bugs that are quite annoying in the GNOME defautl
browser Epiphany that the Mozilla people do not fix, as they have
workarounds in their applications. Ubuntu and Fedora choose Firefox as
their default browser. This was a major set back in my eyes -a nd I
really did not understand why the GNOME default browser was not default
on the GNOME Live-CD.

For marketing I think these mixed messages are poison. Some points may
be only unclear, but they need to be cleared or thought out in order to
send some clear messages. I think the commitmend of the KDE people to
their Konqueror is much higher.

How about those on the list? Who does use Epiphany on the day to day
work? I do not because of these bugs. Can I expect others to use it
then? So such points should be worked on. Maybe there should be more
talk from GNOME marketing to Mozilla marketing if developers from both
sides do not find together. This just as an example. There are many more
issues.


Thilo

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