[Fink-devel] Future of fink

[Remi Mommsen]

Dear all,

I come from reading the threads about 0.5.0 Update and the Fink survey. It seems to me that there are (at least) two different approaches about the future of Fink in people minds. I try to phrase them and would like to start a discussion about it.

(1) Fink is for unix users who switched to mac os x
I think that was the way the fink project was started. It does an excellent job in porting the valuable and well known tools to the "commercial" mac os x platform. This allows former unix users to do their work on one platform only (together with the must have commercial s/w). That's what I like very much about fink. However, these tools come - as it was pointed out - with documentation (man/info pages) which have been written with the average unix user in mind. These tools need familiarity with the command line and will be used rarely by the average mac user who is used to point and click.

(2) Fink is for everyone who would like to save money and get the s/w free of charge (Advertisement: Get gimp for free, instead of paying for Adobe Photoshop).
In my impression that's the way some people would like to go (press releases, sponsoring, CD distribution etc.). However, I think that this aim cannot be reached with volunteers only. The more (unexperienced) users fink will get, the more the support and documentation issue will become a burden to the volunteers. The linux history showed this: linux started like fink, but the big commercial success was made possible by employed developers from RedHat, SuSE and others. If fink wants to go in this direction, then a broad agreement between the developers is needed and IMHO at least some of the developers have to work full time on it. This implies of course that those are paid accordingly (by sponsoring and/or fees for the releases).

I'm not in general against (2), but I would like to warn you not to stumble unprepared into this venture. Otherwise high expectations are raised which cannot be hold. This will frustrate users and we'll end up with the impression of many that mac os x is not better than windows or anything else. That would be very sad.

I'm curious about your opinions.

Cheers,
Remi

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