On Sun, 11 Jun 2006, Mike Hearn wrote:
>
> Indeed, that's the point I was making! Saying "we have this software,
> how can we make people use it?" is backwards. Forwards would be "we
> have this software, what can we do with it that's useful?".
Ahh, I misunderstood you.
The thing is, sometimes the software _is_ potentially already useful, but
the reason it isn't used is not because it wouldn't work, but because of
"secondary" issues.
In other words, sometimes the right answer literally isn't that we need a
new use, or a new feature, but that it needs something _unrelated_ to make
it easier for people to start actually using it.
For example, I believe that most people who use computers at home (to take
the thign people were tagentially talking about) is not that they actually
want to use that particular computer or program, but because they end up
taking their work (or at least their work _habits_) with them home.
>From personal experience, looking back to when people started getting
their first computers, there were two classes: the "geeks" who got them
because they literally wanted computers and the "normal people" who got
them because they used one at work.
So the reason I reacted to your email was because you seemed to be arguing
against making things "easy to deploy/manage at the office" as not being a
primary concern.
I actually believe that for many users, that actually ends up being
(indirectly) the primary concern, because in the end, the reason they may
not use Linux at home is not because Linux doesn't give them what they
need/want technically, but because it's not what they use at work. And at
work, manageability is actually one of the issues (not for the user
itself, of course - which is why this is all so indirect).
> The original summary it said:
>
> - Linux has only 5% share of the client market. Why so poor?
> - Do we let MS rule forever?
>
> I'm sure "How do we increase market share?" is not the right thing to be
> asking.
Put that way, I think you're right. The question before the "How" should
always obviously be the "Why".
> Bryce is saying that RHEL or some other 'enterprise' desktop can offer
> such huge savings that it becomes worth it for companies to switch,
> and that is the useful thing it does. I'm not sure the numbers work
> for that, but can't prove it either way so whatever. And if the
> numbers do work that's not a useful thing for home/end users, so
> we're still looking for a purpose there.
And this is where I think we disagree. I don't think home use is actually
all that different from work use. Among _technical_ people it is, because
technical people are used to making their own choices. But I actually do
believe that the way to most "normal" people (where "normal" is obviously
totally made up, but let's just say it's the people who don't actually
necessarily _like_ computers) is mostly through their work.
It's not the only way, and maybe it's not even the dominant one, but I do
believe it's a big part of it.
(An even bigger part is probably just "inertia", but that's true
regardless of whether you look at homes, businesses, or aliens from outer
space, and there's not a lot you can do about it).
Linus
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