On 26 Apr 2008, at 01:01, Garrett D'Amore wrote: > > IMO, a better example would be why we don't have KDE and AfterStep and > FVWM and XFCE.... clearly those packages are useful to a large number > of people -- in some cases probably *far* more people would be > thrilled > by the inclusion of KDE or XFCE than by e.g. unison or lftp. (In > other > words, the feature gap of not having those DEs is probably far more > painful to a larger number of users.)
A question related to that, which I hope someone is asking is: how many of the people clamouring for, say, KDE, actually translate to people who would pay for support, and conversely how many people who pay for support want KDE? It's very easy to get sidetracked by the huge number of people who just *must* have whatever window-dressing is fashionable this week but have no intention of ever contributing either time or money towards anything, and ignore the people who will actually keep the effort afloat if you provide what they need because they are not so good at whining. Another angle on this, specifically thinking about desktop stuff is: what, realistically, is the chance of any OpenSolaris-based system *ever* having any significant market share on desktops? What is the chance of it having a significant market share on infrastructure systems? What, therefore, should people be focussing on? Desktop stuff? Yeah, right. --tim
