buy-something team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Rick Spencer wrote on 13/09/10 22:10:
>...
> I disagree that "no one" will be impressed. We are the only Linux
> distro that has anything like this. While it is not yet perfected, it
> is totally new and ground-breaking for a FLOSS project to offer this.
> I think we will be compared to 10.04 and other distros that have no
> store front functionality.

I was exaggerating just a little. :-) It's true that people who use
Ubuntu and nothing else will compare 10.10 only to 10.04. But people who
have ever used the iTunes App Store, or Steam, or Bodega, or Linspire
CNR (which has been doing this since 2002) will compare us with those.
We're already seeing harbingers of this:
<http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3896946_2/Why-is-Ubuntu-Succeeding-Where-Linspire-Failed.htm>
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/03/ubuntu_maverick_meerkat_beta/>

>...
> But note that we are not Apple or Amazon. We are Ubuntu. We are a
> community distro, and  we do things our way. For example, we ship every
> 6 months on schedule, we get feedback from users and the community, and
> we respond to it in the next release.
>...

Sarah is a 25-year-old local government employee who took part in one of
our user tests last year. She happened to encounter the page in the
Ubuntu Help that talks about just that, beginning "Ubuntu is a community
developed operating system". She looked at us incredulously. "To be
honest I think of that as PR talk ... It appeals to people. I wouldn't
have any technological understanding to that, if there is one."

So, let's make something that doesn't appeal just to those who read OMG
Ubuntu. Let's go make something Sarah would trust.

One thing that wasn't in the screencast, but that I should have
mentioned yesterday: The e-mail payment confirmation has improved
greatly in the past couple of weeks and is quite good now. Thanks to
Ricardo for the work he's done on that.

Cheers
- -- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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