Re: How are we compelling?

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

Hi!

On Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:38:40 -0700
Travis Reitter <treitter-dev netdrain com> wrote:

[snip]
> How are we really compelling to our target audience - everyday people?

There's a simple answer: We don't.

Everyday people -- in contrast to the other two groups: enthusiasts and
professionals -- don't mind about the "fundamental strenghts" you
mentioned: If they want to keep a very important document, they simply
print it; they don't mind about documents formats. If their neighbor is
asking them for help about computing stuff, they simply lend him the
laptop or let him use the desktop for a day; they are not going to
start Google to find out whether somebody created software that allows
them to give-away a copy legally.

Ordinary users like to use what everybody else uses. Otherwise,
they may switch jobs just to find out the new company is using KDE and
not GNOME, and about half of their hard-earned knowledge just became
useless.

To get onto the computer's of everyday people, we need to make sure
enthusiasts and professionals install it for them, either at work or at
home.

The only other way is getting bought pre-installed, however, this is
not going to happen soon: A regular user will not buy a computer
with Linux/Ubuntu/GNOME pre-installed because he will be worried that
it does not play his collection of video files -- and I mean: his
*complete* collection of video files.

Ordinary people have better things to do that getting into the
troubles of being first movers.

This is the most interesting aspect in GNOME's marketing: We design
products for people who don't care about us, and who we cannot contact
or reach. And meanwhile, we ignore the complains of the people who could
bring GNOME to those people we design for, namely the enthusiasts (and
partially also the professionals).

And sometimes we even actively offend them -- examples include the
gnome screensaver, menu editing, how spacial nautilus was introduced,
and probably some more things before that.


Cheers,
Claus