GNOME Idea Storm

["Felipe Contreras" <felipe contreras gmail com>]

Hi,

Looking at GNOME's road-map I found something that makes me
uncomfortable; you say feedback comes from developers and other
community members, and I can't help but wonder... what about the
users?

People complain all the time about "Linux" not being ready for the
desktop, and to put a concrete example I will mention a firewall
configuration application. It can be argued that it's the duty of the
distribution, that it depends on the operating system, etc. It's easy
to point how something is so difficult to implement that it's the duty
of someone else... if you ask the developers.

But what do users think?

To mention some examples of user feedback there's Dell's IdeaStorm[1]
and Firefox 3 Feature Brainstorming[2]. I prefer Dell's IdeaStorm
because it's clear to see what their customers really really want.

That is good marketing (making your product appeal to your target customer).

If GNOME is aiming to be "an intuitive and attractive desktop for
users" wouldn't it make sense to ask them for feedback? How can the
road-map process not include any user feedback at all?

I propose the creation of an idea storm system that allows users to
propose features and vote for them.

[1] http://www.dellideastorm.com/
[2] http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Feature_Brainstorming

-- 
Felipe Contreras