[Desktop_architects] Desktop Meeting in Japan, Jun. 1

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Friday 09 June 2006 07:44, SAKUMA Junichi wrote:
> Here I attach the notes from the meeting with a hope that
> this movement in Japan and DTL/DAM can start interaction.

interesting stuff, thanks for sharing it.

>   - The OSS development model won't work sometimes with desktop
>     app. users who are mere beneficiaries. Who develops the Linux
>     desktop and how?

was this an open question looking for answers, or a rhetorical question to 
prove a point?

> - Nurturing developers

it seems that one of the conundrums for open source projects, and kde is no 
exception here at all, is how to open our doors to the Asian population of 
developers. we've had a couple of Japanese contributors in KDE, but far fewer 
than i would have expected over the years.

the items listed here are the same challenges developers all over the world 
face and yet we get lots of developers from europe, north america and south 
america. so it must be something more than the items listed, or some unique 
interaction between those attributes of the current OSS landscape and Asian 
culture and expectations.

it would be excellent to hear from Japanese developers what they would want 
and what would make OSS accessible and relevant to them. or why that isn't 
possible, if that turns out to be the case.

> - Other projects
>   - Sylpheed, an open source MUA, released its Windows version.
>     It has had more downloads than the Linux version. It shows the
>     possibility of a paradoxical approach for OSS to spread from
>     the proprietary environment as a starting point.

IMHO what more people downloading Sylpheed shows that there are orders of 
magnitude more desktop windows users than desktop linux users and that 
people, regardless of OS they use, like free stuff. so if even a small 
fraction of windows users who like free stuff pick up a program like 
sylpheed, which is not exactly a dominant app in its space in the linux 
world, they will outnumber linux users easily. in other words, no surprise.

where i get nervous is jumping from that obvious and undoubtedly correct 
foundational statement to conclusions about long term propagation. that's a 
big leap to make and one that doesn't follow purefly from "more downloads!"

as someone who is quite focussed on building an OSS platform (aka "i have a 
bias in my viewpoint"), i have looked for evidence of this phenomenon. people 
using open source applications on windows do not seem to be very aware of 
that aspect of the software and do not seem very motivated to move to 
additional open source components. in fact i've found in conversing with 
users of firefox that the opposite is often true: by finding a specific tool 
that solves the problems associated with web browsing for them they cease 
looking for holistic options; their computer interaction becomes bearable 
enough that it falls below the threshold where they feel the need to look for 
alternatives.

if we want to see increased adoption via the windows route, we need to change 
something in what we are doing because we aren't succeeding beyond getting 
more people to use specific, individual applications. my personal viewpoint 
is that besides apps that help support open standards for data formats, 
the "win32 vector" approach is a retrograde strategy (for a variety of 
reasons i won't bore people with here =)

then again, hard data that would be most useful (and allow more than 
conjecture to be had) is hard to come by and my viewpoint is based purely on 
speaking with end users, people who have done corporate deployments of open 
office and firefox and people from the open office and mozilla teams.

data on the number of open source applications a windows user uses (to find 
out if using one open source application makes the individual more likely to 
use other open source applications), how they perceive those applications and 
what the long term (2-5 year) affect on decision making that usage has would 
be dreamy. realistically, i don't see that coming any time soon.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
Undulate Your Wantonness
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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