[Community] Growing the Community

[Bob Ham]

On 2013-06-14 12:05, Radek Polak wrote:
> On Friday, June 14, 2013 01:38:11 PM Bob Ham wrote:
>> On 2013-06-14 07:19, Radek Polak wrote:

>> > 2/ being free/open is also not enough
>
>> Why do you think that?
>
> First the product must serve it's purpose. Free/open is additional
> value which will attract more people. If you want successful product
> you also need nice design, good marketing and some concurrency
> advantages (features that others dont have).

Freedom *is* a feature over others.

The question I asked is: why do you think phones need freedom *and* 
something else?  You haven't answered that.


> If free/open was enough, why do we have just 100 units sold?

The "units" you're referring to were not phones; the units were upgrade 
boards for existing GTA01/02 phones.

No new free/open phones have been manufactured.

There are many reasons why the upgrade boards have low uptake numbers 
and those reasons have been discussed ad nauseum on this list and 
others.


>> I would note that no really working free/open phone has ever been on
>> the market.
>
> What about Freerunner?

The Freerunner wasn't a "really working" phone when it was brought to 
market.  From what I understand, the software was very incomplete and 
had major problems.  (And attainment of the goal of "really working" was 
actually retarded by Openmoko Inc. during the time the phone was on the 
market as they repeatedly tried to start from scratch.)

-- 
Bob Ham <rah at settrans.net>

for (;;) { ++pancakes; }