Re: Signing off our target audience (was Re: Example of targetted release notes)

[Gezim Hoxha <gezimetc shaw ca>]

On Fri, 2007-16-03 at 09:02 +0200, Quim Gil wrote:
<snip>
> - Let's discuss, agree and sign off our target audience for the 2.20 release.

Good idea.

<snip>
> My 2 cents to this discussion:
>
> - Distros are one of our primary targets: they decide if they ship
> GNOME or something else, and what GNOME components they pick and
> support for their product.
>
> - Regular end users are not one of our primary targets . They are
> millions and we don't have the resources to reach them properly. Our
> way to make end users happy is providing to the distros a GNOME
> release full of happiness potential.
>
> Do you agree with these 2 bits? What are you target & no-target audiences?

I think you got it completely backwards. You see, if we focused on the
end user then on the distros the end result  would be a happy userbase
and as a result people would demand GNOME on distros and distros would
listen. Sure that a little too ideal but I think the reason why distors
such as Ubuntu use GNOME as a default desktop is the fact that GNOME is
use friendly and it's something plausible to be presented with. Now, I'm
not saying the distros should be ignored, because frankly if you make it
too hard for them, then no matter how good your desktop is, they'll
pass.

Now, the developers. It's really, really, really (you get the point)
ridiculous the help we provide to (potential) developers. Looking at the
link from wgo (namely developer.gnome.org) lots, if not all, of the
information there is outdated and useless. These new developers are like
kids, they need to be nourished because frankly without them, we aren't
going anywhere. Research what people want all day long, when you can't
implement the features it just feels like you're not listening. Maybe
the lack of developers is showing in the number of exciting features
seen in 2.18. As someone from slashdot put it:

"Using Tomboy to create lists is now as simple as adding a * or a -."

Who cares? Like, honestly, that's all we got to brag about?! Not cool.

And since I'm talking about developers, the fact that GNOME is coded in
C doesn't help, I don't think. It's ironic that we use gobject to
provide us with object orientation capabilities when C++ is just sitting
there. I don't think students (i.e. potential developers) want to write
C code. It's tedious.

Anyway, I needed to get that stuff out of my chest for a while. Now,
I'll shut up.

-Gezim