Target markets for GNOME

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

Hi!

Sorry @ all to start this. But it seems to be some kind of meme
spreading on the desktop devel mailing list right now. I found it quite
interesting but here's a better place for my humble opinion, I
guess. :-)

Starting with Havoc Pennington [1]:

> 
> The blog thread this weekend brought up the old "are we too dumbed down,
> not dumbed down enough, or just right" line of thinking which (apologies
> to whoever feels offended) I find to be a shamefully lazy, wholly
> misleading, and simply completely broken way to think about software. A
> close second, which is the "let's be simple and avoid confusing people"
> school of thought, is really just the same limited approach, rephrased
> to sound better. Yes I've been guilty of it myself. Doesn't make it
> right.
> 
> The replacement for this should be:
> 1) who, specifically, is the software for? (ideally much more specific
> even than stuff like "technical vs. nontechnical users")  [1]
> 2) why, specifically, do they want to use it? what does it help them do
> that they want to do?
> 

Elijah Newren [2] wrote:

> 
>   - Havoc's recent points about identifying our target audience is
> important in many ways; in relation to this email, it's hard to judge
> what should be part of the desktop when we don't have a defined target
> audience (some who are working on Gnome have a defined target
> audience, but I don't think all of those who do agree)
> 

Luis Villa [3] wrote:

> 
> * if the desktop is to remain at all coherent, you must include
> evaluations of target market/etc. that frankly, as a group, 
> we're basically unable to handle right now.
> 


IMHO, there are three meanings of the word "desktop".

The first is the desktop _nearly everybody_ needs because these people
wouldn't be able to use a computer at all. It consists of basic items
such as a window manager, a file manager, a way to install applications
and start them, ways to configure basic stuff like the X-Server, the
network connections, etc. The quantification "nearly everybody" shows
which group the product is for.

The selling point of this base (or "core") desktop is that everybody
else uses it (including geeks).

The selling point covers two points: The first one is being able to
learn from others (friends, relatives, books, magazines, journals,
interactive tutorials, paid trainings, etc.), and the next one is being
able to deal with nearly every computer. The later argument is
especially important for people who need to be able to work with a
computer: They can switch jobs without additional training.

The second meaning of 'desktop' is the above desktop plus additional
functionality on top; functionality that enables people to do the most
common tasks out of the box. This sort of functionality is determined
by trends and competition. Several years ago, people buying PCs from
Dell and the like didn't know about email. There was no need for a PC
to be able to process emails out of the box. This is different today.

However, let's be honest: How many people buy Linux with GNOME today,
from vendors like Dell? We should nevertheless provide default
applications for these needs. Otherwise every distribution would choose
its own, fragmenting the market and thus killing the network effects of
learning from others.

The only thing to keep in mind is that some users may like to replace
these default applications. GNOME forgets this sometimes unfortunately.

Note that none of these first two meanings is due to any sort of "target
market". Let's have a look at an example: Apple is able to keep its
market niche of being a "designer's desktop" because applications such
as Adobe Photoshop and Quark XPress were early killer applications,
not because it looks good!

Apple's sales would fall to an absolute minimum as soon as Adobe would
stop selling Photoshop for Apple. No matter how cool, easy, or sexy the
interface, without productivity applications, there's no benefit to buy
a Mac.

The third aspect of the word 'Desktop' is thus a full stack:
GNOME and a certain subset of productivity applications on top. For
this definition, there are niches and target markets to explore.
However, the means to differentiate are productivity applications. They
turn a useless PC into an office PC, or a multimedia studio, or an
artwork design studio, etc.

Making a long story short: the desktop enviroment GNOME needs to fit
the wants and needs of (nearly) everybody. (This includes geeks!)
Trying to adapt GNOME's design to a target market or niche is the wrong
thing to do. 

This doesn't mean we can't make additional products for certain target
markets, though. The new admin suite is a good example.

We could also try to push some gnomeiness for certain F/OSS
applications that target a certain market, say multimedia, science, or
something different! Some here on the list may remember that we were
thinking about a Science CD for the University project.

However, a desktop (in its first and (partially) second meaning)
survives by network effects; trying to target a certain kind of
audience would thus be a bad idea.


Cheers,
Claus

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-February/msg00174.html
[2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-February/msg00375.html
[3] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-February/msg00378.html