[Psi-devel] Re: Grab Your Psi

[MRAY]

Remko Troncon wrote:

> We are not a company selling a product.

Psi is a product. The product of all our efforts. - We just don't sell it.
If I ever learned one thing by participating in the project is that 
there are more similarities to the business world than I thought.
It's all about the same ways to achieve goals. It's about time, effort, 
organization and decisions. Even if everything is "free" it does not 
mean it is uncontrolled.

> On corporate identities: Companies are not always as happy to have to 
> stick to the same identity at each time. They _have_ to, for fear of 
> losing clients. 

This is only true for really big companies that try to enter new 
marketing areas where their old "picture" does not fit.
A company only benefits from decisive marketing. That's not a technique 
to just make money in the first place.
It's the key to success, and I think we all want Psi to succeed.

> This means they typically keep on sticking to very old, legacy things, 
> although they don't want to. An open source project has the freedom to 
> _not_ do this, to be free in its slogans, to be free in its looks. It 
> can even have funny slogans ! Such freedom also means a lot more 
> freedom to progress!

I'm certain that sticking to things that don't work is a bad idea. 
Changing to something different may be healthy, but not unless you know 
it's bad.

If you choose to be free of a direction - you choose to stick with an 
undefined "nothing and all" forever. Now is the time to decide in what 
direction Psi wants to go, and as far as i know the coders behind Psi 
have already chosen: a non bloated, clean, stable yet feature-rich JEP 
conform IM application.
What we need is a face, which can only have one look. And it should 
better fit to the idea of the coders that to the thousand tastes out there.

I appreciate the opportunities of open source, but projects like Psi 
should not be the chance for everyone to realize them.

Everybody has the right to create his own psi buttons and put them on 
his page, he can even offer them for others to download, we will 
certainly not sue him. that's the freedom of open source if you ask me. 
But please don't offer them officially.

> I also would really like to see you come up with a slogan that 
> everyone likes. 

I think this is a little bit unrealistic.Nobody can do that.
I like my "Psi is Presence".
I never thought of a slogan to be the most attractive thing in terms of 
entertainment. I'd like to see a serious information which briefly draws 
an informative picture of what Psi is all about.

> Because this another thing that sets businesses apart from projects 
> like this: 

Which is really a pity. It's natural! But somehow it's a pity. The art 
is to handle with the freedom. An the first step to do so is to have 
someone who cares about it.
Kev does not earn a single Pizza (and probably not a tie or a suit ), 
still he is a dedicated leader willing to put all his effort in the 
project so all the efforts of others can succeed, too.
I often wished I could just decide what I contribute, and what will be 
used for the project. But I couldn't, I had to accept the orders "from 
above". - Not very "open sourced" if you see it like that. But it's good 
that way.

> they have dedicated people inventing this stuff, without having to 
> compromise and to discuss the proposals with the complete userbase. 
> People on this list can't even agree on a simple thing such as 
> removing a never-used option from the UI, let alone make decisions 
> like this.

Don't we all write in the forums and mailing lists to find a consent 
(even if we are not always _that_ effective)?
Isn't it all about finding reasonable defaults and about making the 
right decisions?
A non oriented Project would never draw attention to dedicated inventors 
like yourself.
This is what drives Psi forward.