Well I can certainly respect that, but what good is innovation if nobody (or at least not enough) is going to use it. And I did think that providing a viable alternative to Windows was one of the objective of Linux. I didn't compare Fedora with Windows because it is accepted that Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop OS market. It is within the Linux community where the question of popularity exists.

 

If not compromising the principles means less usable and less popular operating system, the I deeply believe that the priciples are wrong to start with. I understand this is a very strong statement, but I think the underlying principle of Free Software Foundation is tha software should be free for ALL and not only for those who are technical enough to understand it. I think we all would agree to it.

 

I order to abide by our principles I feel we must make our software more appealing and usable than the competition, for which the immediate goal is Ubuntu, then MAC and then ultimately challenge the supremacy of Windows.

 

I am not trying to start a flame war. After all we are all on the same side. I just wanted to contribute my thoughts.

 

regards,

Mukul

 

On 12/20/07, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk@redhat.com> wrote:

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007, Mukul Dharwadkar wrote:

> It's really going to be very hard if we still continue to measure our
> success on popularity in Developer community. Although it is a good
> thing to be accepted by Developers, the true measure of success is the
> acceptance by the user community in which, I am sorry to say, Ubuntu
> beats Fedora hands down.

"True measure of success"?

The most persistent fallacy in the open source world is that desktop usage
by grandma and grandpa is the "true measure of success".  If the "true
measure of success" is number of novice desktop users, then Microsoft is
beating all of us by such a wide margin that we may as well not bother.

Ubuntu is extremely good at polishing what currently exists for new Linux
users.  That's a good goal.  But it is not Fedora's primary goal.

Fedora's goal is to put together the best *and most free* general purpose
operating system with *the strongest community of contributors* in order
to *drive innovation*.

> We have to come up with ways to make sure that Linux in general and
> specifically Fedora becomes the OS of choice. It's a large market out
> there and we can make it if we get our priorities right.

I agree that we must keep working to make Fedora more useful to more
people.  Note that the differences in that regard between Ubuntu and
Fedora shrink with every release.

We must not, however, compromise the Free Software principles that give us
our strength.

--g

--
Greg DeKoenigsberg
Community Development Manager
Red Hat, Inc. :: 1-919-754-4255
"To whomsoever much hath been given...
...from him much shall be asked"

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