On 8 December 2014 at 16:41, Reindl Harald <h.reindl@thelounge.net> wrote:

Am 09.12.2014 um 00:31 schrieb Stephen John Smoogen:

On 8 December 2014 at 16:17, Mike Pinkerton <pselists@mindspring.com
<mailto:pselists@mindspring.com>> wrote:

We could have decided to double-down on growing that enthusiast
segment, but, first, that's not what the people who showed up to
do the
work decided; and second, I actually think we continue to serve the
hackers and tinkerers very nicely with the spins and nonproduct
option.
What we're not doing is expanding

I'm not suggesting that Fedora not expand into a new market
segment. I'm simply suggesting that you not abandon existing users
in order to do so.

That works in a standard commercial environment where you are able to
get the original users to 'give payment' which helps continual funding
that work. However in a volunteer organization.. if people don't do the
work, then it isn't going to get done. And there is always a lot of work
in keeping something going from release to release.

the opposite is true

in a commercial environment you need to release new features and versions (even if nobody really needs them) and marketing as well as EOL all the time to force users buy updates

in a opensource environment that pressure don't exist because you sell nothing more or less by a change, you have even users switched to a opensource OS to get rid of the ongoing bloat of new versions while you are happy with the existing software but need to upgrade because otherwise you have no support, bugfixes and security updates

I am expecting that there is something missing in what you are thinking and what you are typing (English not a first language, trying to type something succintly which requires a treatise etc etc.) The reason I am saying that is that your definitions above would say that Linus should not have written the Linux kernel because Minix covered everything. The only reason FVWM would have been written is if someone paid the developers since twm covered all the minimums. That all the changes and 'improvements' over the last 30 years are due to commercial efforts as Opensource volunteers should only get rid of bloat.

Since I am expecting that is not what you mean... I am expecting that the first sentence should have been:

the opposite is also true. (versus is true).

I will allow that developers come into opensource for multiple reasons. Some want to remove stuff to make things smaller and easier to understand. Others want to add stuff so that some feature they (or someone else) wants is available. [The gigantic list of options that most GNU packages have in long form is testament for that :)] In the end, what I am trying to say is that if programmers come in and do the work for making something small, make something secure, make something blue versus red.. it gets done. If developers go around and say "someone ought to do X.." it never gets done and people blame whoever did something else for not doing X.

Stephen J Smoogen.