On Wednesday, November 23, 2011 11:51 AM Per Jessen wrote:
Dennis Gallien wrote:
[snip]
It doesn't apply because the organisation of openSUSE is just not comparable to that of a commercial organisation. Also, openSUSE does not, in my opinion, have the same concern for the openSUSE users or customers as a commercial organisation would have. If an openSUSE user upgrades and (for whatever reason) ends up being really annoyed, perhaps even losing data (hypothetically), he can huff and puff as much as he wants, it won't change much.
[snip]
It's apples and oranges - that's why your frame of reference doesn't apply (or isn't really useful).
I suspected that was your point, but wanted to confirm. And may I suggest that this raises a very important issue/question that frankly I've been unclear about for a long time. Actually, I think we are largely in agreement, except perhaps in one important respect: If some here are supporting groups of internal customers or all the more so external customers, then those users will not give us a pass just because we are not commercial (posts here and on the forums demonstrate this loudly). While perhaps a legitimate argument can be made to those users that their expectations are inappropriately high for community software, as you and I know from our commercial background, end-users are just not receptive to "excuses". All they care about is whether it "just works" and they can get their job done. Probably both of us have had conversations with users along these lines and have the scars to prove it. When it comes to desktop end-users whom we are presumably trying to attract to openSUSE and whose frame of reference is a commercial product - Windows - this applies all the more so. If we cannot provide the quality and stability that they expect, and they are nearly helpless to resolve upgrade issues, then for the vast majority of them our only substantive value proposition is that our software is free (other values such as "open source" are largely an abstraction to them). So you've put your finger directly on the question I was trying to raise (if I may paraphrase): "openSUSE doesn't have the same concern for users or customers, and regardless of problems users may experience and how much they complain, it won't change much". Assuming your premise is correct, then that argues for much better clarity in who this project is intended for and who we are working to attract as new members. My initial thought re setting expectations and better preparing/supporting the upgrade process is based on my understanding (perhaps incorrect, but again IMHO I've never seen this clearly articulated) that we are trying to grow our community primarily from users as described above. And, hence, if we cannot deliver a highly stable out-of-the-box major upgrade (certainly "major" for them) process for them, then we need to either improve that process and/or reduce/restructure the deliverables and/or do more to set expectations and prepare/support the upgrade (or some combination thereof). Otherwise, we will not appreciably grow. If on the other hand our real target users are those like most of us, i.e., intermediate and power users, sysadmins, developers, engineers, free-software disciples, etc. then I entirely withdraw my initial recommendations. While we should expect there to be no genuine "show-stopper" bugs, otherwise the vast majority of us and others that may join us are able to work thru the inevitable glitches in a new release. Some of us will (and many do) wait for later stability, others will jump in immediately. We understand the trade-offs. We may get frustrated, but we certainly shouldn't be surprised. As originally a Red Hat user (coming prev from Unix), it was very clear who the primary target user was, as is Fedora now, i.e., the IT professional. I switched to SuSE simply because IMO SuSE did a better job; but the target user was essentially the same. Then distros - and new linux businesses - seriously targeted the desktop, and a heckuva lot changed. And while there has been some modest successes, most failed (even the commercial attempts), other of course than Ubuntu. It delivers far less than openSUSE, but clearly its "just works" strategy has been by far the most successful attracting new users from Windows. (And of course, in fairness, it's quite relevant that the most successful projects are those with solid commercial backing.) My hypothesis is that the project cannot be all things to all those who have been with us from the SuSE days while at the same time meeting the expectations of the huge and highly diverse (but very non-technical) desktop users brainwashed by MS, along the way trying to deliver more than even our larger competitors. That approach is ultimately unsustainable. Thanks for your reply. --Dennis -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org