WARNING: The BOF has moved from 5th to 7th.
If you have a G+ account, please register on the Future and Business BOF G+ Event
Future of Business BOF
The goal of this BOF is to discuss the future of GNOME from a business perspective. This is the agenda for the meeting. Any participant is free to modify the agenda prior to the meeting.
The BOF will run from 10h to 14h in the room A112 on August 7th, with the core discussion being planned between 11h and 12h30.
10h -> 10h30 : Open Discussion about the Current Situation
Multiple GNOME related businesses have witnessed a clear decrease or a complete disappearance of GNOME related customer requests.
1. Is this a general trend? Is there any counter example of growing businesses around GNOME?
Open discussion where participants can share their history, the business they did around GNOME and what the business they would like to do with GNOME.
10h30 -> 11h : GNOME objectives
GNOME is an open source project and its success is not necessarily linked to related business successes.
2. Should it be an objective of the GNOME foundation to develop businesses around GNOME? What should be the priority given to this objective, if any? At this stage, we are only discussing the intention, not any way to achieve that goal.
3. What is the objective of the GNOME project? What is the common goal of contributors?
4. What is, according to participants, the current definition of the GNOME project?
11h -> 11h15 : BREAK
11h15 -> 12h30 : Defining the future
The computing world is currently evolving and running a business means to look forward. Some people are completely replacing traditional desktops with tablets or mobile device. Some replace desktop applications with cloud based applications. According to GARTNER[1], the sales of desktop/laptop/netbook is expected to decrease by more than 20% by the year 2017. It is also believed than emerging market will skip the laptop/netbook transition and switch directly from nothing/older PC to smartphone/tablet.
GNOME is thus a player in a shrinking and very crowded market (Windows, MacOSX, KDE, Unity). It should be noted that an important part of the desktop market is legacy (WinNT, XP, Solaris, GNOME2).
5. Should the participants take the previous analysis for granted? Are they agreeing with those facts as a basis of discussion?
6. What are the conclusion we can draw for the GNOME project based on this analysis?
Based on the previous discussion:
7. What should be the priorities of the GNOME project?
8. Are those priorities shared with other projects? Can we make a list of projects which whom it would be interesting to cooperate?
9. According to the participants, what should be the definition of the GNOME project? Is there any difference between the "should be" and the "current" definition?
10. What should be the targetted user base? Can we define a list of personas describing our users in 2017?
11. In 3 or 5 years, what should GNOME become, according to the participants? Please list here your ideas and we will review them together, listing pros and cons.
- The default desktop for free operating systems (Debian, Archlinux)
- A free, desktop oriented, operating system for desktops/laptops (GNOME OS)
A desktop on top of FirefoxOS for laptop/desktop or mobile plugged on a big screen (idea by Chris Lord)
The reference developer platform for FirefoxOS (idea by Eitan Isaacson)
A free desktop deeply integrated with free/privacy caring cloud services (as discussed in this blog post)
The content creator reference platform (as proposed in this blog post)
12. What are the actions you would like to see taken in the GNOME project?
12h30 -> 14h
Open discussion