Re: Marketing (Was: Re: New developers and publicity)

[Nicolas Roard]

Le 28 sept. 04, à 04:37, Banlu Kemiyatorn a écrit :

> On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 15:22:08 -0600, Adam Fedor <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > What I'm more afraid of is that people will be interested in this, but
> > nothing will get done.  That's happened more than once in the past.
> >
> > So feel free to start this. I certainly hope we can accomplish
> > something.
>
> In my opinion. I think marketting GNUstep is a waste because it is not 
> a desktop
> environment.

I disagree -- whatever the project, marketing, word of mouth, is 
important. But..

> End-users make a system self-sustainable since technically they
> paid (in a way) developers to live. It's better to put marketting
> effort into a desktop
> environment, eg. backbone and etoile.

... effectively, marketing a desktop will be easier for GNUstep, as so 
many people already mix the libraries with the potential GNUstep 
desktop.
Which is absolutely normal, considering what currently GNUstep propose 
: we claim it's not a desktop and it's just a "development 
environment",
yet the applications you could create with it are absolutely not 
integrated with any host environment, have a completely different 
look'n feel.
It's thus logical that people think GNUstep is itself an 
environment/desktop. Plus, the GNUstep libraries provides more or less 
all a desktop
needs, and thus GNUstep apps are automatically "integrated" and can 
easily communicate together or share data (pasteboard, services, 
defaults, DO..).
And effectively, a GNUstep "desktop" is more or less just a collection 
of apps.
To confuse things a bit more, the GNUstep project now hosts GWorkspace, 
which provides the closest thing to a "GNUstep desktop/env" for an 
end-user.

To sum up: there is a lot of confusion about what GNUstep is as a 
project, but it's quite comprehensible.

And this confusion doesn't help us to attract people.

Marketing for the GNUstep project should at least be an effort to 
gather the *existing* marketing resources in one place:
have a web page listing GNUstep arts (icons, wallpapers, etc.), 
documentation, marketing docs, articles, tutorials, etc.
Regardless what GNUstep is supposed to be, all that information already 
exist and should be centralized.
And of course, we should have some marketing mailing-list.

About the desktop/libs confusion... It's probably meaningless to say 
GNUstep is "just" a development environment, as it just live in its own 
little world.
Yet we probably shouldn't advocate it as a desktop -- because it's not 
one. What we could perhaps do, is to say, GNUstep is a project here 
implementing
OpenStep-like system, and "divide" the project in two parts:
- GNUstep Frameworks: AppKit, Foundation, and perhaps others..
- GNUstep Desktop(s): a set of requirements ala freedesktop for GNUstep 
desktops ? and here you could list Banlu's, Backbone, Étoilé, etc.

Basically, it would be a marketing spin, as GNUstep itself will 
continue to be about the frameworks, but at least it will be much 
clearer.

The "GNUstep Desktop" part could just then handles the "desktop parts" 
of GNUstep. It could be a list of requirements to have cooperating 
desktops
(so an user could switch GNUstep desktops without losing anything), it 
could have some apps (GWorkspace..) for a local GNUstep Desktop, and
it could, hopefully, be used to implement Alexm's idea of "desktop 
bundles" -- so you could have all the desktop-related GNUstep parts in 
bundles,
and have thus a nice "GNUstep/KDE", "GNUstep/GNOME", "GNUstep/Windows", 
each encapsulating nicely the particularity of theses desktops
(eg, dnd, theme, etc.) -- and thus GNUstep could really be marketed as 
a development solution, independant of an ideal "GNUstep Desktop"...

> However, it would be better (in a view)
> for the desktop environments to share openness with end users as much
> as possible.

What do you mean by that ? Agree on particular file formats/frameworks 
? (think of AdressBook framework..)

> Now for the DE goal if people agree with the above idea.
>
> In short term, I think it is a good idea to have a desktop environment 
> project
> under GNU's umbrella. It is a quick way to have people to agree on 
> something.
> And I'm expecting Adam to start this (if he can agree with the idea)
> to reduce any
> possible social conflict.
>
> In long term, the GNU brand and politics could defer the project. In 
> that case
> some people can start doing something like GNOME did if they think 
> GNU's
> political view isn't as important.
>
> There will be no further opinion from me on this subject because I'm 
> busy
> building my own DE which is focusing DTP and I would like to dictate 
> it. ;)

keep in mind I'm already involved in Backbone and a bit in Étoilé, so 
I'm probably partial :-)

But I think, whenever is possible, we should work on a common desktop 
project, as
we aren't many developers -- fragmenting the workforce isn't helpful.

That said, it's normal that people have different goals...
For example, Backbone aims to be a quite "classic" desktop while 
Quentin's Étoilé wants
to be more innovative (metadatas filemanager, etc.).

But what we could do, perhaps, is at least to have some approach 
similar to FreeDesktop, but for
us -- that is, share basic frameworks manipulating data, if not the 
apps themselves.
So an user could smoothly switch desktops without losing anything.

For example, things like AddressBook, BookmarkKit, etc.

--
Nicolas Roard
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
 -Arthur C. Clarke