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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: why is there so little KDE PR ?
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2001-01-20 3:30:15
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Neil Stevens wrote:
> 
> On Friday 19 January 2001 04:58 pm, Martijn Klingens wrote:
> > Why is still 99% of all (non-server) software development done for
> > Windows? Market Share. Why does Windows have market share? Marketing.
> > Period. Not quality, because OS/2, MacOs, Unix (all flavours) and many
> > others are better in any or all respects, just marketing.
> >
> > Marketing counts.
> 
> Marketing counts, if your goal is to build market share.
> 
> Marketing is a waste of resources, if your goal to be building a better
> desktop.

Hi,

I'm sorry, but I can think of at least 3 "development" benefits from greater
market share:

  (1) more developers -- which means more kickass apps like KDevelop, Aethera,
KPresenter, etc.
  (2) more users -- which means more bugs found and more developers developing
for these users (see (1))
  (3) more support from third parties -- which means they will provide tools
for KDE users/developers (such as Real providing a video player for Linux or
Borland providing a compiler which works with kdelibs), which means more users
(see (2)) which means more developers (see (1)) and more developers (see (1)
above)

It's unrealistic to pretend that a small group of KDE developers can make KDE
the best desktop it can be.  Even Microsoft doesn't rely on its own developers
and heavily relies on third-party developers -- and they certainly have far
more programmers than KDE does.

It's also obvious that in any group of people not everyone will have the exact
same interests.  It is clear that a number of KDE developers, for whatever
reason, do not care about market share.  What I don't understand is why it
bothers them that others do.  If something some people in the KDE community do
doesn't interest me, I just tune it out.  It certainly doesn't make the desktop
worse if KDE has good marketing; if anything it's quite likely to make it
better (see (1), (2), and (3) above).  So if you don't care about marketing, I
suggest that you just add a line to your procmail that filters out mails with
"PR" or "marketing" in the subject and focus on what interests you.

Ciao,

Andreas Pour

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