[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME

Thilo Pfennig thilopfennig at foresightlinux.org
Wed Feb 21 16:40:05 PST 2007


On 2/21/07, Christopher Blizzard <blizzard at redhat.com> wrote:
>
>
> Kathy Sierra does a good job of describing some of the problems around
> this:
> ...
> If we're ever going to grow beyond our small community, I think that
> what GNOME has done is important.
>


I think it is important to make some distinctions. I see this blog post as
somewhat moralistic. We must be clear what our goals are. I would define two
main goals:

1) Develop free desktops
2) Increase the market share of those desktops.

Though I personally care very much about usability I think we should really
not focus on that. So I would say every way that helps to increase the
market share of free desktops is good. I don't really care if these are
technically better. I wish they were. but I think that this is more (like I
said above) a hacker moral. I can see the point that "passionate users" can
be a good thing - but the fact is that from the popularity  most people
really don't care about how they feel. They follow a mainstream.

The market power of Microsoft now alone generates or keeps the user base.
The more we could split their user base the more chance we will have to
change the enviroment for free desktops.

The thing is that: Yes GNOME has learned some lessons painfully but I think
the users do not thank developer who accepted the HIG as a guideline instead
of just following their own preferences.

Again: These are at least two different issues:

a) The usability - the elegance - the moraly better desktop.
b) The pure success - marketing - market share

These are related - but I think that b) gets less love - and just worse:
Many think that a) means b) or mix this up. We have seen this often: The old
Macs against DOS - sure then Macs where better and they also created
passionate users - but DOS and then Windows won the game and now make the
rules.

I want free desktops to succeed so they can make the rules. I think there is
a chance - and this should integrate these moral views that will also
convince some users - but really not all. I think that we could already have
the majority of the desktop market if we had acted more intelligently in the
past. And that would include that many flavors would coexists and that
quality would matter more.

Our problem is that today Microsoft still makes the rules and we follow. We
copy (also MacOs) where we can: Samba, OpenOffice.org, File Managers, Mono,
Deskbar Applet,... and this is ok - but as long as we just follow we will
always just be second best. I only see a few applications that are proud
enough to step up and try to lead by example. Again I would count Inkscape
and Jokosher (maybe also Firefox?). I really think we need more of this
attitude to really make a difference.

regards,

Thilo


-- =

Thilo Pfennig
http://wiki.foresightlinux.com/confluence/display/~vinci/
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