Re: Fwd: Opinion: Stop developing for the desktop?

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

Stormy Peters wrote:
> Marketing folks,
> 
> Who would you guys recommend we have talk to Martin?

Owen Taylor (Red Hat & GNOME Shell), Vincent (also working on GNOME
Shell), Havoc Pennington or Lucas Rocha (from Litl, innovative mobile
user interfaces, as best as I can tell) and Matthew Allum/Ross
Burton/Paul Cooper (Intel, ex OpenedHand, and our star Mobile people).

On the subject itself, I'm a bit scared about talk of abandoning the
desktop, because it implies to me abandoning the user interface (the
alternative is to adopt a number of form factors & provide user
interfaces for them). The GNOME project has had success because we've
been able to elaborate & explain a very user-oriented vision - free
computing for all - and that has driven our priorities, usability,
localisation, internationalisation, accessibility.

If we move to providing platform components for mobile & embedded
environment, with, say, a reference UI for netbooks, we'll be abandoning
not just desktop-shaped devices, but also our bision of being
user-oriented rather than technology-oriented.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org