[Telepathy] future of Telepathy?

[Martin Klapetek]

On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Daniel Pocock <daniel at pocock.pro> wrote:

> On 28/04/16 14:16, Martin Klapetek wrote:
>
> > You might get surprised, because yes, crushing majority of facebook
> > users would rather stay connected with 350 friends on facebook than
> > be alone on a motorbike forever. You need to ask the ordinary users,
> > not your IT friends circle.
> >
>
> This is where you need to think about it more deeply
>
> Look at Apple: they are happy to have 10% of users who absolutely love
> them while the other 90% buy other products.  Would they make a change
> to their business model that might lose some of those people to try and
> get bigger market share?  I doubt it.
>
> Look at Jeremy Corbyn (Britain's new Labor party leader): like Apple,
> his message is constant.  No monarchy, no nuclear weapons.  People
> either agree with him or they don't but everybody knows where he stands.
>  He doesn't care about all the mainstream voters who are uncomfortable
> with his views and maybe he won't ever be elected PM, but he sticks to
> his values.
>
> We need to take the same approach as Apple and Corbyn: prioritize our
> values.  Serve our biggest supporters as well as we can instead of
> losing sleep over everybody and everything.
>

These analogies are flawed, however. Apples and oranges.

Apple is a for-profit company and even that 10% of the marketshare
is enough for it to still be the highest valued company in the world.
Btw now they reported losses after longlong time. Yes, I'm pretty
sure there will be business model adjustment. Make no mistake,
profit is the number one priority for Apple.

But you need to look into our own field - OpenOffice, Calligra Office,
MeeGo, Mozilla is getting rid of Thunderbird and FirefoxOS, ICQ,
MySpace, and so many more are left behind because they couldn't
stay relevant today. Even BlackBerry is a sinking ship these days,
despite their strong values of privacy.

Yes, we should keep our values up high and always in front, but at
the same time we need to understand our target users as well as the
"business landscape" and make sure we're ahead. Otherwise we'll
get left behind in our world of ideals and illusions.

Cheers
-- 
Martin Klapetek | KDE Developer
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