Mummy, I made a platform in my pants! [Was: focus!]

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Havoc Pennington">

> I tend to think explicit platform-building sucks (vs. accidentally making
> a platform in the course of making something useful).

Havoc, I love your desk-pounding focus, but sometimes I think you inspire
people too far up their own arses. ;-)

A fucking amazing platform isn't an accident, and we need a fucking amazing
platform to bring more developers to GNOME - both internal developers and
external developers. One of our *crucial* audiences must be  FLOSS hackers
and ISDs. If we don't satisfy them, we can't build our own momentum for
building this amazing software stack, and we can't build an ecosystem with
opportunities for everyone else.

Examples: Vomit in whatever colour you want, but Microsoft have been able to
satisfy Office power user audiences and create a pretty compelling platform
for third party games developers (let alone everyone else, but this is a rad
example). Apple have been able to satisfy the needs of photographers, while
creating a really sweet development platform which has in turn created an
ecosystem of smart, polished, cheap software that actually makes money for
third party developers. Google satisfy the needs of grandmothers wanting
directions to their grandchildren's colleges, but also created a compelling
mapping API for third party mashup hackers / mapping companies.

We can, and should, do both. :-)

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia           http://lca2007.linux.org.au/
 
     GDK (acronym): GNU's Not Unix Image Manipulation Program Tool-Kit
                                Drawing-Kit.