On 27 October 2017 at 08:20, Felix Miata mrmazda@earthlink.net wrote:

Richard Brown composed on 2017-10-26 15:39 (UTC+0200): ...

...

Since 2009

...

• our number of monthly downloads of our distributions had steadily

declined, suggesting a constant apathy in the adoption of the Project's main output

• our number of downloads around each release had steadily declined,

suggesting that each release was failing more than the last at gathering significant traction with the broad "Linux of everyone" target audience the openSUSE Project had at the time

• our number of unique users of our official download repos had

steadily increased, suggesting however that we had a steady, loyal, and growing userbase

...

When taken on balance this mean that openSUSE could be argued to be _at best_ stagnant, or at worst in a shallow decline....

Was the competence of Zypper taken into consideration here? I can't remember the last time I did an offline upgrade - 2009 it could have been. I download GM .isos for use with installation on computers not my own, but rarely use them for anything else. Zypper is just too good to waste time in single user mode do do a distribution upgrade that is virtually indistinguishable from ordinary updating, and can readily be prevented from upgrading selected packages via Zypper's intuitive locking system.

Indeed, of course we took it into consideration.

It's simple logic really - You can make one absolute conclusion - less people downloading the ISO's means less potential new users and contributors

You do not gain new users from 'zypper dup'

The increasing repository statistics (which are effectively counting 'users of YaST & zypper hitting the repos') showed that we obviously remained successful at retaining users & converting some of those ISO downloads into persistent users

But, if the decline of ISO's downloads were to continue indefinitely, we would increasingly struggle to gain new users, and it would be infeasible to continue openSUSE in the long term

Without new users, we don't get new contributors. Without new contributors, we can't continue to offer what we already do (because like any organisation we have an attrition rate - sooner or later many contributors lives change and lead them to move on)

And ideally, we do not want to be a project that 'treads water' - in fact the communities collective enthusiasm for Tumbleweed shows that. It's increase in Tumbleweeds userbase and contributors during the same time I describe in the above post shows that openSUSE had the potential to appeal in totally new ways to audiences we never had an interest from before, and that is the sort of magical spark and energy that really gives the project as a whole new momentum. Such appeal and momentum are a very appealing characteristics that draw in more new users, and also seems to have a tendency to encourage more of those new users to step up and contribute.

It might seem counter intuitive, because we no longer target 'everybody everywhere', but since introducing Leap, changing the website, and focusing openSUSE's messaging more towards SysAdmins, Developers & Power Users, the Project seems now to be on a track of increasing it's ISO downloads (ie. it's pool of potential new users).

People want to know what the Project is good at, with this direction we are targetting our strengths and representing what our community is more actively involved in and effective in producing. I don't think it's a shame to admit that as a Project the bulk of the openSUSE community is not interested in developing an Ubuntu-style 'Linux for your grandmother' experience.

Of course, as an open project, we're open for people to take the project in that direction. But they need to step up and do that work. No one to date has, and given the Project is 12 years old now, I think it's fair that we stop waiting for those people to appear.

There is also a school of thought that it is important to provide an 'aspirational' angle to your marketing. Why do so many people use Kali Linux, the penetration testing distribution? There are probably more Kali Linux users out there than there are professional penetration testers. But people are drawn to it because they ASPIRE to be hackers, so choosing the tools built for that is a way of starting them on that road. Why do people use Arch Linux, a distribution that wears it's 'we're hard to use, that's how you learn' challenge on its sleeve? Because some people aspire to master such challenges.

Given openSUSE's strength at providing tools for SysAdmins, Developers & Power Users, by incorporating that focus in our messaging, we plan to appeal not only to that audience, but also anyone who aspires to join that audience in the future. Kids in school who want to be developers, small business owners who need sysadmin skills, and Millennials who have grown up with technology around them all their life, but now want to really take things to the next level as a Power User of a capable operating system. We can't appeal to them when we advertise ourselves as 'Linux for everybody' - if we target everybody everywhere, we effectively target nobody, nowhere.

We seem to be doing a good job of attracting new attention and from that new users into both Leap & Tumbleweed. As long as we do everything right to keep them, this should convert to more repo/'zypper dup' users in the future, and more contributors long term, keeping the project happier and healthier than it has been in the past.