Re: What are our goals? (was: Re: [Fwd: Re: New supporter] )

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

Wow! This are amazingly good, short, down-to-the-point answers!

I think, I'll move them to the wiki as a sort of notes sheet for
potential promotors on conferences all around the world.

Any objections?

Cheers, 
Claus


On Wed, 06 Jul 2005 14:06:34 +0200
Dave Neary <dneary free fr> wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> Selon Thilo Pfennig <tp alternativ net>:
> 
> > I would say: make the best Desktop available. Be better than the
> > others. Do we have a concrete audience?
> 
> Public sector. Free software has a lot to offer here, and GNOME is
> well placed for the market.
> 
> ISVs. Get people building software on our stack, contributing to the
> ecosystem.
> 
> Windows users. Get great GTK+/GNOME apps built for Win32 installed on
> computers, and lower the barrier from moving to 100% GNOME.
> 
> > Why are we using GNOME instead of X,Y,Z?
> 
> Easy to learn, easy to use. Power without complication. Simplicity
> without compromise. Doesn't get in the way.
> 
> > What is GNOME btw?
> 
> Above all else, GNOME is the community. Then, GNOME is the platform -
> the ability to integrate and interoperate transparently between
> applications developed coherently in parallel (a shared technical
> vision to go with our shared cultural vision).
> 
> > What if I use the GNOME desktop and a non-GNOME (KDE)
> > application? Am I a GNOME user or a KDE user?
> 
> GNOME.
> 
> > And if I would use KDE and use GNOME-applications?
> 
> KDE. But a little bit GNOME too :)
> 
> > So: What is a GNOME user?
> 
> It's not black & white (except sometimes it is). A Linux or Unix user
> who chooses GNOME as his desktop environment is a GNOME user. A
> Windows user who is using the GIMP, Inkscape, GAIM, XChat, Abiword and
> a bunch of other GTK+ or GNOME based applications is a GNOME user
> tryoing to escape from Windows. A KDE user who runs a couple of GTK+
> applications is a KDE user who runs a couple of GTK+ applications.
> 
> > What importance does freedesktop has for GNOME?
> 
> Vital. GNOME developers wouldn't be working on freedesktop standards
> (and creating freedesktop in the first place) if we didn't think that
> defining interfaces to allow interoperability wasn't important. We
> want the user to be able to start a KDE application, cut & paste from
> a GNOME app and have that Just Work. We want printing, help, docs and
> other subsystems shared so that you can read your GNOME help in Konq,
> or print a document from KWord and Abiword on the same machine. This
> is a no-brainer.
> 
> > If we want to reach a
> > goal like 10x10 would this mean to reach that goals by all means
> > necessary (even harm KDE?)?
> 
> No. Although reaching 10% of the globval desktop market will
> inevitably put us into conflict with KDE at some stage, I'd like to
> believe that it will stay at friendly rivalry.
> 
> > What is the current situation with OpenOffice.org?
> 
> OpenOffice.org is currently a 3rd party application using the GNOME
> framework for at least some builds (the Ximian OO.o GNOME builds). It
> is currently the best available office suite, and integrates pretty
> well with GNOME.
> 
> > I got a very mixes
> > picture. On the one hand there is the Gnome-Office project which
> > consist of Abiword and Gnumeric (right?).
> 
> And GNOME-DB, yeah.
> 
> > On the other hand Openoffice.org is
> > not GNOME but is somehow an important part in argumentation, but not
> > really loved  by GNOME people?
> 
> That's right. It's an essential part of any switch argument, but isn't
> really a GNOME program (in philosophy or community). There are people
> who work on both (Michael Meeks is a long-time GNOME contributor). But
> it's fair to say that GNOME developers consider OOo to be outside the
> GNOME sphere. Whereas Abiword and GNUMeric are very much inside that
> sphere. I see no ambiguity in saying "there's a credible competitor to
> the leading office suite, and it integrates well with GNOME" on the
> one hand, and saying "Here's some great GNOME office software" on the
> other.
> 
> > Same with Mozilla. Mozilla is somehow
> > essential and there is cooperation, but the goals are ver different.
> > There are some nasty bugs that are quite annoying in the GNOME
> > defautl browser Epiphany that the Mozilla people do not fix, as they
> > have workarounds in their applications. Ubuntu and Fedora choose
> > Firefox as their default browser. This was a major set back in my
> > eyes -a nd I really did not understand why the GNOME default browser
> > was not default on the GNOME Live-CD.
> 
> Because we started on Ubuntu.
> 
> Look, don't over-analyse the Mozilla thing. the Mozilla foundation see
> themselves as a mass-market 3rd party software package now. That's
> where they want to be, and they have good momentum. Statistics like
> percentage of the browser market are important to them. The Linux
> distributions want to be able to say "We ship with Firefox!" because
> firefox is a well-known free software package. That's a business
> decision, not a technology decision.
> 
> > For marketing I think these mixed messages are poison.
> 
> Not really. Don't over-dramatise things which are only known and
> important in our own little world. As you said earlier, most users
> don't care about issues like OOo and Firefox. Both use GTK+ as their
> toolkit on Linux, and are essential items in the list of bullet points
> that you give people when they ask "what software can I have on
> Linux?" - they're not GNOME, but they're part of the typical GNOME
> desktop.
> 
> > Maybe there should be more
> > talk from GNOME marketing to Mozilla marketing if developers from
> > both sides do not find together.
> 
> What makes you think there isn't?
> 
> Cheers,
> Dave.
> 
> --
> Dave Neary
> Lyon, France
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