Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

[Ruben Vermeersch <ruben savanne be>]

On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 09:09 -0500, Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak wrote:
> > How about a healthy dose of ambition and aim for becoming the best
> > platform of choice, regardless of the freeness?
> 
> All desktops are aiming for that, free or not. And honestly, most 
> desktops are "good enough".
> 
> 
> > We're already the most free and open platform out there.
> 
> But we seem embarrassed to promote that fact heavily.
> 
> 
> > Let's focus on how we can become the best platform overall...
> 
> I don't think "best" matters that much to "average users". I mean, 
> people use Windows despite its headline-worthy flaws.
> 
> 
> Personally, my company moved to Gnome/Gnu/Linux because:
> 
> 1) We found that our MS Exchange Server stored data in bizarre 
> proprietary hard-to-backup format which requires specialized proprietary 
> backups programs, and as a result, we lost a lot of email in a crash. 
> This is a "freedom of data" issue. It is much easier to backup simple 
> text files in a dovecot maildir!
> 
> 2) We wanted to print photos with their filenames at the bottom of the 
> page. Impossible with the crummy Windows software. Easy, if we patched 
> gThumb! This was a "freedom to change" issue.
> 
> 
> 
> Obviously I want Gnome to be the "best" too. However, I think freedom is 
> a key Gnome attribute that is easy to explain, easy to promote, and 
> truly different and better than the competing offerings.


I fully agree that this is great and this is good stuff for marketing.
However, if we need a strategy, we need to focus on other things. We
don't need to play the freedom card again, we're already best at that. 

My main point was that when it comes to making a big plan, we need to
tackle the harder issues where we're lagging behind.