Re: openFATE feature 306967, KDE default

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Will Stephenson<wstephenson-l3A5Bk7waGM@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I have never suggested an inverse Canonical+GNOME.  I am talking about a
> political statement, but those terms are loaded with plenty of negative
> connotations.  Call it a marketing direction.  We market to the clear
> preferences of our existing users (in most places a 70/30 split is pretty
> clear - look at the enterprise Linux market).  We market to a large and
> vibrant developer community - it's clear that the majority of future
> innovation in openSUSE is going to come from the community.  And a largely
> untapped community rather than one already aligned with our two largest
> competitors.  So call it a strategic shift, call it a marketing move, call it
> a political statement, but recognise the benefits.

I cede that there are possible benefits, but there are also
consequences -- and I think that the negative consequences outweigh
the potential benefits.

Pro:

* We may invigorate our KDE users to become contributors
* We may encourage some KDE contributors to choose openSUSE
* We demonstrate that openSUSE Project is truly open enough to make
decisions independent of Novell

Don't think for a second that I don't support the last point heavily.
I just don't think this is the right decision.

Con:

* We may alienate our GNOME users -- while a smaller percentage than
our KDE users, ~30% of the community is still important to me.
* We may alienate our GNOME contributors
* We will not encourage any GNOME contributors to choose openSUSE if
they're not already here
* We probably wind up having further conversations about "defaults"
with future releases, such as burying GNOME to "other" with 11.3, or
worse.

>> > This should not weaken our support for GNOME, XFCE or anything else.
>> > Look at Kubuntu, which has become a successful project in its own right
>> > despite initial hostility and neglect from Canonical, or Fedora-kde,
>> > which has a contributor community that is of the about the same size as
>> > the openSUSE-kde community.
>>
>> Then the feature is pointless -- if you're trying to achieve the
>> inverse of what Ubuntu and Fedora have with GNOME, it would require an
>> actual *focus on KDE. And that's not on the table, so what we'll have
>> is a political statement just to say "lots of our users use KDE and
>> want us to make a political statement that we'll wave the KDE flag a
>> bit higher than the GNOME flag."
>
> You're putting words in my mouth there - I am quite aware what's on the table.
>
> Political statements can have 0 direct relevance to openSUSE but a large
> negative effect on us as a distribution, take the Microsoft deal.  This one
> would have a net positive effect.

That's where we disagree - I feel it would be net negative. Only time
would tell, of course, but my tally differs from yours.

Best,

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier <jzb-QJ5e30gfbnmsTnJN9+BGXg@public.gmane.org>
openSUSE Community Manager: http://zonker.opensuse.org
Blogs: http://blogs.zdnet.com/community | http://www.dissociatedpress.net
Twitter: jzb | Identica: jzb
http://identi.ca/group/opensuse/members
-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe-stAJ6ESoqRxg9hUCZPvPmw@public.gmane.org
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help-stAJ6ESoqRxg9hUCZPvPmw@public.gmane.org