[Promotion] Fitting apps into the picture

[Wade Olson]

On 8/7/06, Tom Chance <tom at acrewoods.net> wrote:
> when targetting developers, of course). In fact if I was Dictator of the
> World I'd be tempted set-up a cross-desktop web site promoting apps, and have
> each "desktop project" point to that, then highlight how their framework
> contributes to those apps. If that makes any sense.


First, if you were Dictator of the World, you'd probably be distracted
by creating mandates about Americans wearing pantaloons or something
similar.  Only later would you get to focusing on desktop apps.

This is very interesting because it brings up the relationship between
the desktops, FDO, project portland, and distros, and then the
'responsibilities' of each.  Are they synchronized (somewhat
rhetorical)?

At the end of the supply chain, you have a distro that makes choices
(some more precise than others) in their default package for the end
user.  The general trend is to make a decision.

Earlier, when distros were trying to prove their worth, they'd dump in
the kitchen sink and declare "look at the wealth of free applications"
and users promptly declared "awesome..so now how do I fugre out which
of these 37 pdf viewers and 19 image viewers in my star menu I should
use?"

So, where the heck is the target?  I assume that users pull up apps
that have a consistent look-and-feel (widgets, window decos, fonts,
icons, pop-ups, help systems, etc)

Now, I've always envisioned some vague set of concentric circles
around gnome and KDE, where attributes or applications are close to
the core (always developed in lock-step with the desktop, extremely
dependent on libraries, etc) and others are more vaguely related.

In a gnome-based distro, K3B is a heck of a lot more likely to be
included than ksysguard, so popularity also plays a key.  Then you
deal with situations like Linspire, where they toss both Kontact and
Evolution out the window, and go with Thunderbird.

So with all these variables and overlapping groups, it's certainly a
bit cloudly.  But I'd tread lightly here, because I'm not part of a
development team.  I can imagine that even if a group is peripherally
associated with one of the desktops, talks of
investigating/promoting/collaborating with the 'other desktop version'
may rattle some cages.  Who knows.

>
> It partly depends on where we apply our marketing effort... at the level of
> the libraries, that plus the "desktop environment" (i.e. panels, background,
> file mananger), all of that plus the really cool applications that make
> extensive use of GNOME/KDE technologies, or even just abandon that and help
> Canonical, Ark, Novell, Mandriva, etc. market their products!
>
> I'd love to hear some thoughts from others on this.
>
> Regards,
> Tom
>
>
> [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2006-August/msg00047.html
> [2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2006-August/msg00025.html
> [3] http://www.inkscape.org
>
> --
> The task of critique is not to denounce the ideals, but to show their
> transformation into ideologies, and to challenge the ideology in the
> name of the betrayed ideal (Fromm – Beyond The Chains Of Illusion)
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