ChrisOwens wrote: > Well, there are things going on at Slim Devices to which *I'm* not > privy, but I'll go out on a limb and say a few things. At any other > company, I would run such a post by my manager, and probably his > manager, and maybe the PR director, but things are still "open" enough > here that I think my own judgment is good enough for this post. > > The changes going on at Slim Devices broadly fall into two groups: > Logitech wants to capitalize on its investment after the acquisition, > and Slim Devices wants to use the financial backing of Logitech to > organize itself into a well-run business unit instead of a startup > running on a shoestring. Add into the mix that all of us here are very > mindful that we don't want to lose any of the Slim Devices "magic", > whether that be engineering, quality, customer service, or "community". > > > Within a few months, you're going to see Squeezeboxes in major retail > outlets for which the old Slim Devices could have never manufactured > enough units, and advertising in places the old Slim Devices could have > never afforded. Logitech has manufacturing and marketing muscle, and > it's not something that's just available to us, it's part of Logitech's > plan to sell a lot of Slim Devices products. And that's a good thing, > because... > > We can now afford to take a few risks on new products. I'm still going > to follow Sean's lead on not announcing anything before its time, but > there are projects that Sean and Dean have wanted to do for a long > time, as well as some things that might work well with Logitech's more > traditional customer base that are now gathering steam. > > These two areas are where we're spending our energy. > > Throwing out the Slim Devices way of doing business is not part of the > plan. I have been in meetings at Logitech now where we discuss > products that have been flops (or worse, are in the process of > flopping). I don't want to insult my new coworkers, but many of these > flops are due to very strange thinking from a Slim Devices point of > view. You can spend a lot of time doing market research and interface > design and writing specifications and developing hardware and software, > release it, fix some bugs, and start the whole cycle over again... > > Or you can make it powerful enough and flexible enough and open enough > that the *customers* can *turn it into* the product that *they want to > use*. Naturally there still has to be support and direction on the > Slim Devices side, but there are definitely real business benefits to > the Open Source approach. > > Now, looking back at what I've written, can you see where in these > plans and priorities killing Slimserver would fit in? Do see where a > plan to spend a lot of legal and development energy reinventing the > wheel and ending up with a proprietary software package would fit in? > > Me neither. >
Thanks for the reassuring words, Chris. We all hope the SD of making and supporting will take over the world even if it will mean we'll be a little less l33t. Regards, Peter _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
