On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:29:23 +0200, peter sikking <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > creating interaction requires making hard choices, because you > cannot make an application for everybody. For that you use the > product vision that you set as a team at the beginning of the > project. And then you don't fudge when the moment is there.
I would like to temper this a bit (not agent provocateur as gg, but maybe devil's advocate): a team that is too rigid about its vision and never adapts it over time runs a real risk of becoming irrelevant after a while. On the other hand, having no vision at all or ignoring it and running like headless chicken is usually worse. > You make hard choices about which features to include and > which not. Which workflows to actively support and streamline, > and which go on the back seat. About beginners vs. Experts. But one should always balance the interest of the few who are targeted by our product vision with the interest of the majority of the users who are not necessarily part of that vision. In other words, a decision that provides a small improvement for the target users but implies a significant regression for all other users should be considered very carefully. Our current vision is rather elitist. This is not a bad thing because this is often the only way to make real progress. But we should also be aware of its consequences. > Sven did not set the product vision, the GIMP team did by > consensus. I only moderated that session. But I am here to > implement that vision on an user interaction level. Again, to temper things a bit: this was only a subset of the developers present at LGM last year (GIMPCon 2006, see the minutes at http://developer.gimp.org/gimpcon/2006/ and read the section "GIMP Vision"). I hope that this was a representative subset of the GIMP contributors (of course it was, I was there!) but we should also keep in mind that nobody has absolute authority over the GIMP project. It is always possible for someone to propose someting that goes against the current consensus and hopefully convince others that this is the right thing to do. This may be good or bad depending on the context (it should also be possible to stop useless arguments by saying that something is out of scope for GIMP). I am not judging the merits of the way we work, but just stating that this is something to keep in mind. -Raphaël _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer