On Tuesday, April 21, 2015, Louis Suárez-Potts <lui...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hm. I think the issue below is serious. And one we can address. But do > others think that way or believe otherwise? Not sure how we can really address this, considering our challenges making a new desktop release. Rgds jan i > > louis > > On 20 Apr 2015, at 13:25, Louis Suárez-Potts <lui...@gmail.com > <javascript:;>> wrote: > > > > > >> On 20 Apr 2015, at 13:06, Guy Waterval <waterval....@gmail.com > <javascript:;>> wrote: > >> > >>> Or have you not noticed that there are > >>> precious few native (as opposed to virtualised) open-source > productivity > >>> tools to be found ready for the enterprise? > > > > to rephrase: productivity software, especially for enterprise, is > overwhelmingly dominated by proprietary apps sold by very large > multinational corporations. The apps available are often "free," as in beer > but not free as in speech. They are not open source. It does not matter if > the operating system is Android or iOS or whatever, though there are some > differences, at least in the marginal OSs, which represent a minute > fraction of the total used. > > > > What this means is that as tablets (however imagined) are brought into > the enterprise (public or private sector), open source is almost entirely > absent. Yes, many apps use open source languages but so what? The UX model > promoted by the smart, mobile device shuts out user intervention, with some > exception, and there seems to be nothing organised that I can see that’s > trying to change this arrangement and make it easier to create, distribute > and even promote open source productivity apps on mobile devices. > > > > Yes, I am aware that tablets are falling out of popularity, but I also > am aware that the tablet as imagined by Apple and incarnated in the iPad, > was designed and is still envisioned as a consumer entertainment device, > not as a work device (though that is changing) and that efforts to > insinuate the tablet form factor into enterprise, as Microsoft has tried, > have not succeeded. However, the mobile device is succeeding in areas where > investment capital is less visible and it is likely to be the preferred > mode for the billions that will be coming fresh to school, work, and other > areas where computing devices are de rigeur (now or soon). And these users, > in Africa, Latin America, and the rest of the world, rich or poor, will be > using… proprietary software. > > > > So, although the situation on the desktop (and by this one means also > the laptop, of course; one refers here to the UX not hardware) is generally > not bad for open source, that’s not so for the mobile UX. I doubt very much > that Ubuntu or Moz. will put a dent into hard proprietary wave. What would, > however, would be mobile apps that can work smoothly with existing desktop > productivity software installations. Like Corinthia. > > > > best > > louis > > -- Sent from My iPad, sorry for any misspellings.
