Re: Don't overlook Simplicity.

[Tim Allen <timallen godzilla zeta org au>]

On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Bob Smith wrote:

> <Warning: I'm going to make enemies here>

Good luck.. :)
 
> Too simple? As in, keep it difficult and obscure, so that everyone who comes
> to it has to struggle like we did? So we can keep out the Windoze riff-raff?
> It should be possible to achieve both elegance and simplicity. Linux is
> already powerful. If Gnome has the opportunity to make it simple and
> straightforward to configure and use, without sacrificing that power, it
> should do so. Failing to do so can only hurt us in the long run.

Is it just me, or is the concept of "target demographic" useful here? Or
more importantly, what's our aim? Do we want to just write the best
possible software, or do we want to take over the world?

If we want to take over the world, the answer is simple. We make the most
common tasks (averaged across the entire population) as simple as
possible, requiring little knowledge or learning, (say, web and email) and
give it all away. This, more or less, is what Microsoft does. And, as I'm
sure you'll agree, it's effective. The people who claim we should be
working on just making things simple now, so that Joe Sixpack can use
Linux, are effectively voting for this course of action.

If we just want to write the best software possible, we must put in
effort, we must ignore the press trumpeting Linux (they'll get over it,
don't worry), ignore the rabid benchmarking, the comparisons between Linux
and NT, ease of use and the Mac, and everything else. Every day, the only
software we have to beat is the version of Linux, GNOME, GIMP, KDE that
was released yesterday.

If that's all we care about, if that's our priority, we will be making
Good Things - and we'll windup conquering the world anyway. The press will
still rage over linux, since it kept refusing to react to the analysts
predicting its death and just kept getting better.

In short, it's a choice between world domination now or later. If we
choose "later", it just gets better from here on.

> Bob   rwsmith@cnw.com
> (If I had the time to pick up programming, I'd help. since I don't, I'll
> re-lurk)

Ah, come on. We need more than just programmers. I, for one, am thinking
of volunteering for head of the Great Linux Pep-Talk Project. :)

Tim Allen