Target market?

[Josh Boyer]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:38:08 -0400
Will Woods <wwoods at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 2007-07-23 at 16:06 -0400, seth vidal wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-07-23 at 15:02 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> > > One, simple question that may not have an answer.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > What is our target market supposed to be?
> > > 
> > 
> > according to the docs, etc I've seen in the past:
> > - hobbyist/expert/early adopter
> > 
> > The only problem with that is that we seem to always be writing
> > software and encouraged to direct our efforts to people who do not
> > fall in that group. We're encouraged to write for ma and pa kettle
> > and auntie 'em. 
> > 
> > That's been the biggest confusion I've had over the years.
> > 
> > It's not impossible to work for both groups - but I hate being told
> > we are supposed to work for group 1 and then told to write for
> > group 2.
> 
> So, this is just my personal opinion as A Dude Who Has Used Linux For
> A While, but I always feel like we should be doing this in stages.
> 
> 
> Stage 1: Make developers / maintainers / experts happy.
> 
> Stage 2: Use the combined power of thousands of aforementioned
> developers / maintainers to make the distro awesome for Early Adopters
> and other tech-savvy types.
> 
> Stage 3: With the greater numbers provided by Early Adopters, further
> polish the distro to the point where it's usable by the Whole Wide
> World.

I think this is slightly flawed.  Stage 1 is not a one time thing.
It's a constant on-going cycle.  If it wasn't, there would never be
anything new.

Which means you can reasonably attain stage 2.  But since
the people in stage 1 are by then off developing new stuff to make them
happy, the people from stage 2 are constantly resetting making it hard
to get to stage 3.

Where the _cool_ part happens, is when people from stages 2 and 3
(to a lesser degree) start contributing to stage 1 itself.  Maybe we
should start focusing on providing an easy way for people to get from
stage 2 to stage 1.

/me stops rambling and goes on vacation

josh