[openbeos] Re: FC07 - Permission to create promotional VMWare image distributed on CD
- From: "Urias McCullough" <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 23:24:10 -0700
On 8/2/07, Mathew Schofield <mr.skoe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 8/3/07, Urias McCullough <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Yes, I understand - but at this point, we don't believe we're
> > providing an experience any worse than an image that can be downloaded
> > from Haiku's website directly.
>
> I am sorry to butt-in here, but i must say that theres a difference between
> someone searching for Haiku (Their initiative) and giving out CDs (Someone
> elses initiative). People will more likely have an understanding of Haiku if
> they have to search, download, and test an image -- compared to someone
> thats just been given a CD to shove into their PC.
And to be fair, we're only giving out VMWare images - so it's not that
they're just "shoving it into their PC" - they will actually have to
copy the files to their HD and install VMWare player, and start this
thing up manually.
We consciously chose this method rather than attempting a LiveCD
because we didn't want the *extremely* bad experience that a LiveCD is
likely to create at this point.
Would you rather we provided explicit instructions on how to go to
Haiku's website, download the image, and install it from there? What's
the difference? We're saving them the trouble (which becomes a
cumbersome barrier to entry), and we're packing a few extra tidbits
into the image that the official images won't have. This will
alleviate half the frustrations we hear about from first-time image
users - complaining that they can't do anything with it, and don't
know how to download and install any software on it.
Seriously, I don't understand why the community is trying to hide the
project from the rest of the world. That is a horrible way to grow,
and you're not going to attract new people that way. Wouldn't it be
better to get new developers interested sooner than later?
Finally, we're talking about a Linux picnic here. These are not "joe
users" - these are likely to be Linux hard-cores who are much more
likely have software-development skills. We NEED these people. If they
aren't interested in Haiku, they'll probably just throw the CD away
anyhow.
Oh well, I guess it was inevitable that once someone started talking
about distributing pre-relase copies of Haiku, these discussions would
take place. The community has been arguing over this since nearly day
one.
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