Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:
> On 7/14/06, *Jeff Waugh* <jdub perkypants org 
> <mailto:jdub perkypants org>> wrote:
>     I have been banging on this drum in the Ubuntu community for a
>     while, but I
>     guess I haven't been banging it sufficiently loud in GNOME: Whenever
>     we talk
>     about GNOME, we *must* talk first and foremost about benefits, and
>     then back
>     it up with the features.
>
>
> Amen. :)
>
> One of the things that seems to be drifting with GNOME both in its 
> current form and in the upcoming (and proposed Topaz) is that a whole 
> bunch of features are getting tossed at the end user without actively 
> bundling them together in a coherent whole of benefits accrued.
> Why would end users use GNOME and thus Linux unless they are sold on the 
> benefits of using them ? The bells and whistles would come later and 
> would come in a logical followup.
wrt marketing, Seth Godin ("Purple Cow") does a good job arguing for 
making something that stands out, vs. figuring out how to get whatever 
you made to stand out (after you're done making it).
thought about from a design rather than marketing angle; why would end 
users use GNOME and Linux if those things were not designed/invented to 
benefit them?
The goal should not be "get people to use Linux" but to provide benefits 
to people. Linux or GNOME or Java or Mono or a web site or a hardware 
device or whatever it is should be implementation, not goal.
Havoc