[Sigia-l] Marketing vs. design

[Listera]

Jared M. Spool:

> I am curious why you think this is more parasitic than Red Hat or any of
> the other open source vendors?

Since this is the holiday season and time of warm and fuzzy feelings, I'll
be generous towards the parasites. :-)

The fundamental problem for retail-level open source software is NOT one of
marketing and cute packaging, for heaven's sake. They suffer from piss-poor
design. What the parasites bring to the table is not a solution to this
fundamental problem but a misdirection towards what's easy: packaging, the
equivalent of Skip Intro. At least Andy Hertzfeld tackled the issue head on
with Eazel/Nautilus.

> I thought the entire idea of the open source movement was to push value into
> the support and packaging space. (At least, that's what I keep hearing Tim
> O'Reilly tell me.)

You *are* listening to the wrong people, obviously. Unless, of course, you
are hoping for an invite to Web 2.01, Browser 3.9 or Babble 4.3. :-)

---- 
Ziya

Best Practices,
For when you've run out of your own ideas and context.