* Andreas Jaeger <aj(a)novell.com> [2010-06-29 14:56]:
We came up with these three large proposals and first
tried to "blend" them
together but could not find directly a really good combination, so decided to
publish these as "pure" strategies.
We have two traps - a too narrow strategy and a too broad one. If somebody
likes to propose a merging of two strategies, please go ahead and propose a
new "blended" strategy.
I have made a proposal on this list for a more general,
ecompassing strategy, delegating these "pure" strategies to those
who would need to spend their free- or worktime to implement them.
In other words it would consider openSUSE as an umbrella project
targeting different audiences and integrating diverse
subprojects into a coherent whole.
Regarding too broad: Let's be practical: Whom do
we design the default
installation for? Whom do we want to reach with the openSUSE wiki entrance
Even now there is not really a default install, sure, if you
install from DVD KDE is preselected but three other desktops can
be easily selected and there are different LiveCDs to choose
from.
I see it as a feature that users are given a choice and that we
can accommodate KDE, GNOME, XFCE, and LXDE users (and assisting
technical less capable users to make an informed choice is a
matter of providing documentation if we desire to address them as
a target audience).
While there is a bias towards desktop usage today due to the short
lifetime it does not preclude the possibility of forming a team
providing LTS for a subset of packages as long as there are enough
contributors sustaining such a subproject.
Now for the wiki entrance page it would be simple to provide a
short summary of the projects that the project consists of and
then provide links to subsections directing _different_ target
audiences to their area of interest which might be "Desktop
usage", "Server/cloud usage" etc.
page? If we are too broad, we reach nobody because
everybody feels lost. So,
what's the right balance?
Isn't the core problem that it is currently unclear what openSUSE
stands for? At least IMO there is a severe deficit in marketing,
but I'm not so sure that it is simply a matter of adopting a new
strategy, but rather of *communicating* existing strengths and
unique features (i.e. competitive advantages) both of the product
and the community.
--
Guido Berhoerster
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