On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 12:18:07AM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote: > > If "we" want increase the number of outsiders to be part of the > ecosystem, then do it on our terms > > :-) > > You can't do it *all *on your terms. Because nobody would come at all. But > you can have what's important to you. > > Apple actually didn't win because it had a big marketing department and > psychologists. Just Steve. I worked with Steve for 12 years, and during > part of that time had an office right across from his at Pixar. Steve > understood a lot of stuff that would help Free Software. His lessons are > right there for us to use, if we can only make ourselves listen. >
Beyond the legends, Apple wins because they have always treated their users like monkeys to be locked in (something that they have been extremely successful at), and have focused on an extremely reduced set of supported hardware. GNOME has tried to do the same: treat their users as monkeys, deciding what they would be enabled to do and what they shouldn't fiddle with. They have built the myth of the "average desktop user", and they have decided what such average desktop user should look like and what she would like to do with their desktop, mostly without asking actual desktop users if they agreed with that myth. You can't complain if more than a few people in the community are pissed off by this attitude: I like to tinker, and I have used GNU/Linux because it allows you to tinker. If an interface pretends to treat me like a stupid, that's just not for me. Steve Jobs understood that users must be won with eyecandies, and on that side we will never be able to beat Apple. Not because Free Software cannot produce better eyecandies, but because the newly-won users, lured through eyecandies, would flee back to Apple as soon as Apple provides a more appealing set of eyecandies. We should win users on more fundamental aspects, like freedom, but you cannot force anybody to be free against their will. Freedom is a choice, to be made again every single day, and has a cost. HND KatolaZ -- [ ~.,_ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - GLUGCT -- Freaknet Medialab ] [ "+. katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it ] [ @) http://kalos.mine.nu --- Devuan GNU + Linux User ] [ @@) http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia -- GPG: 0B5F062F ] [ (@@@) Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ ]
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