On Mon, 2008-09-01 at 22:46 +0100, Robert McWilliam wrote: > On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 09:12:48PM +0100, Philip Wyett wrote: > > What is really beginning to worry me is that there is too much choice of > > applications in the Open Source world. Instead of working to make what > > we have better and bite into bug #1 and give users a base set of > > applications they can get comfortable with and trust, we are going to > > leave maybe switchers to Linux with the mass confusion of which > > application is best and sticking with Windows. > > That's kind of missing the whole point of open source. The advantage > of distributed and uncontrolled development is that everybody goes in > whichever direction they want and explores the possibilities for > solving a problem to their own satisfaction. The fact there are a > multitude of solutions is an advantage as we can each select from them > to get something we are happy with. >
Well... I'll skip the first sentence as such a thing should be never said on a list such as this because it will offend! Exploring new ideas and distributed development are great and I wholly promote that, but to facilitate certain end goals many factors must be taken into account which can mean constraint being introduced. > Dictating the "right" way of doing something and getting everybody to > work on it is highly unlikely to actually get the best solution as > there is no perfect person to be the dictator. It also precludes the > possibility that there are a range of options because different people > want different things. > Nobody is dictating or wanting to be a dictator and using such inflammatory language does nothing for debate. > If you want someone else to do the choosing then you can go for your > distro's default and not worry about it. > Ubuntu has it's focus on a base set of applications. These do change over time as part of an evolutionary process and that is good. But the selection of those applications is such a constraint I mentioned earlier that is part of a long term goal to appeal to existing and new computer users to trust Ubuntu and make the choice to use it. This I believe has been very beneficial from say a few years ago when you could look at a distribution with a user and not stand a chance (due to the distributed/fragmented nature of applications and inability to easily configure, use and link things together etc) of swaying them into a change whereas you have a chance due to the fact of consistency today with projects such as Ubuntu. > It really annoys me when people preset choice as a problem. It might > be intimidating to a new user if they are presented with a huge number > of options but that is an argument for how we should be presenting > things to the new user not an argument for limiting the choices > available. > Choice is a good thing but can be defined as an issue in certain circumstances. A bad can hurt the overall goal or offering numerous choices can hurt us by confusion. It's a balancing act that really does have to be thought about sometimes in my opinion. Regards Phil
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