On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:29:23 +0200, peter sikking <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:> creating interaction requires making hard choices, because you> cannot make an application for everybody. For that you use the> product vision that you set as a team at the beginning of the> project. And then you don't fudge when the moment is there. I would like to temper this a bit (not agent provocateur as gg,but maybe devil's advocate): a team that is too rigid about itsvision and never adapts it over time runs a real risk ofbecoming irrelevant after a while. On the other hand, havingno vision at all or ignoring it and running like headlesschicken is usually worse. > You make hard choices about which features to include and> which not. Which workflows to actively support and streamline,> and which go on the back seat. About beginners vs. Experts. But one should always balance the interest of the few who aretargeted by our product vision with the interest of themajority of the users who are not necessarily part of thatvision. In other words, a decision that provides a smallimprovement for the target users but implies a significantregression for all other users should be considered verycarefully. Our current vision is rather elitist. This is not a badthing because this is often the only way to make realprogress. But we should also be aware of its consequences. > Sven did not set the product vision, the GIMP team did by> consensus. I only moderated that session. But I am here to> implement that vision on an user interaction level. Again, to temper things a bit: this was only a subset of thedevelopers present at LGM last year (GIMPCon 2006, see theminutes at http://developer.gimp.org/gimpcon/2006/ and readthe section "GIMP Vision"). I hope that this was arepresentative subset of the GIMP contributors (of course itwas, I was there!) but we should also keep in mind thatnobody has absolute authority over the GIMP project. It isalways possible for someone to propose someting that goesagainst the current consensus and hopefully convince othersthat this is the right thing to do. This may be good or bad depending on the context (it shouldalso be possible to stop useless arguments by saying thatsomething is out of scope for GIMP). I am not judging themerits of the way we work, but just stating that this issomething to keep in mind. -Raphaël_______________________________________________Gimp-developer mailing listGimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
