Re: About The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initative

[Alex Hudson <home alexhudson com>]

On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 11:59 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 10:00 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > One thing I was majorly disappointed with was the release of 2.18:
> > there is a huge perception that GNOME hasn't moved forward from 2.12/2.14 in
> > any significant way. 
>
> The release notes were crappy, that's all. (Gervais Mulongoy and Quim
> and co did their best, but it was hopeless at that late stage.)

I agree with that; but I don't think that's the only reason - Release
Notes are great for listing all the changes, but I think most people get
their information about the latest GNOME from the press. Release Notes
are good at priming the press, but they don't get across any particular
message other than "we've improved these things". For example, take
ZDNet on GNOME 2.14:

        http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39257913,00.htm

The big news was the administration tools. They weren't new
particularly, but the improvement was there and GNOME decided to have a
named administration suite. In contrast, I don't think they even covered
the 2.16 and 2.18 releases - while the quality of the release notes
plays into that, it's not the whole thing.

While it's too optimistic to expect killer new features in every GNOME,
it would be great to be able to give say two or three reasons why
someone should upgrade. Without that, it ends up being a "well, lots of
things are a bit better" type of message - which I don't think will
persuade people that GNOME is advancing at the rate it actually is.

I think release notes are great for existing users; I don't think they
pull in many new users, and my point was really more about the latter I
guess: I think it should be a function of the marketing team to help
create buzz about GNOME releases, and show people what they're missing
when they're not using it. 

Cheers,

Alex.