Re: Example of targetted release notes

["Gervais Mulongoy" <gervais mulongoy gmail com>]

The short of it is everything needs to be made easier. You tell me, do you ever get frustrated with GNOME? Does it ever do things in a convoluted way? Take 
this recent discussion about music playback.

Maybe marketing can put together a study and answer a couple questions, such as what the users like and don't like about GNOME. And what would they like or what would they like from the pool of Topaz ideas. This assumes that marketing doesn't already have these answer, and we just need to put them in writing.

The data from this study could then be turned either into a set of specifications. Such as one for music playback, video playback, file/content management (tagging, searching), hardware/device management (including sound cards, monitor, disks, peripherals, power), hardware sensors/monitors, networking, publishing (graphics, documents), production (multimedia presentations which including radio shows, music tracks, slideshows, etc). Basically the kinds of specs one finds on freedesktop, but just for GNOME. Again, this assumes that these types of documents don't already exist and if they do, please let me know because they might need some revision and a focus groups can be useful here.

So even while GNOME's development groups remain autonomous, these documents or specs can be used to formalize agreements and relationships because road maps can be hard to keep up to date or made to use a consistent layout.

My experience trying to produce release notes has lead me to believe that plan and execute now for the future because trying to whip things up at the last minute ends up with frustration and arguments. I hope it makes sense to all to identify all the stakeholders and their interests, to formalize these into some sort of document like a spec, and then to move forward.

If this doesn't contribute to the current discussion, my apologies, and please disregard.

-Gervais.

On 3/15/07, Dave Neary < dneary free fr> wrote:

Hi,

Coincidentally, RHEL 5 came out teh same day as GNOME 2.18 - so we got a
chance to compare how Red Hat did its release to how we did it.

Have a look at this:
http://www.redhat.com/videos/real_tech/

This is a series of videos, each one focussing on a real benefit of RHEL
5. Ignore the fact that it's videos, and that they spent lots of time &
money on them.

Concentrate on this: each one is a story.
"Hi, I'm an IT manager. Here's a problem I had. Here's how RHEL 5 fixed
it." They don't talk about how something is done, they don't talk about
virtualisation, they talk about problems and solutions.

In techie release notes, you might have one item about virtualisation,
but you wouldn't make the link to real user problems (managing legacy
systems with new servers, adding redundancy without adding hardware,
etc). I think that Red Hat really got their focus right on this.

Also, this: They're clearly aimed at CIOs, sysadmins, IT managers. Not
too many "Hi, I'm a mother of 4, and RHEL helps me print my photos
easier". Targeting. The law of sacrifice. Red Hat make their money in
data centers and on servers, not on the desktop, and they're not going
after that market. That doesn't mean that they're not interested in it,
and they're certainly not going to refuse your money if you want to
install RHEL on desktops, but taht's not where their target is.


So - provocative question of the day - what are the problems which our
target audiences have with their computer infrastructure (that is, ISDs,
hobbyists, public administrations)? And what did GNOME 2.18 do to
address those problems? How about GNOME 2.20? Do we have a concrete idea
of the things that need to be made easier?

Cheers
--
Dave Neary
dneary free fr
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