Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> GNOME is a *great* platform to build desktop-ish apps *right now*.
Tech-wise strongly agree; ecosystem-wise no, because the number of users
is too low for (non-hobbyist/volunteer) developers to care.
> That's our platform's space. People who get scared that "Web 2.0" is
> going to replace us need to remember that the web needs a good web
> browser to run on, and that web browser needs a toolkit to be written
> in, and that toolkit is GNOME. It's there right now and it works.
>
> All the advancements in software for end users are happening elsewhere:
> in the web, and in high-level languages. That's fine. That stuff also
> needs a desktop-ish foundation to be built upon, and that foundation is
> GNOME.
While I agree with most of your post, here I think you're missing an
important point:
- for almost everyone in the world, that foundation is _not_ GNOME.
It's some other desktop.
- in fact much of the recent innovation does not work on GNOME, and
many of us don't notice since we just don't use sites like MySpace
and Xanga, or commercial music services, or whatever, and thus don't
experience their frequent IE/Windows-specificity
i.e. just because people use/need "a desktop" doesn't mean they use/need
"any desktop" or specifically "our desktop."
The benefit to audience has to be *vs what they have* not *vs nothing*
The relevance of not-just-a-desktop as a direction is that it allows you
to think about this question.
"make a desktop" alone almost by definition means failure - it defines
the project as an existing product category that everyone already owns -
why do they need a new one?
GNOME at least needs to say "make a desktop that _______" though for
many cases of "that _______" the desktop aspect will be an artificial
addition rather than an essential element of the user benefit, and thus
very vulnerable to someone offering the same benefit minus the desktop
requirement.
I always have to add the disclaimer that people are free to be
disinterested in market share, mass adoption, and what have you. There
are many other measures of success.
However, to me it's very clear that "make a desktop" has no chance of
getting to "10x10" - this is the "safe" yet guaranteed-to-fail path.
Havoc
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