WebMink

The New Trinity

I commented on this elsewhere, but just saw a line of icons on the bottom of a page that said it all for me.

People have pain points today - spyware, virus infection and overpriced upgrades. All three have a solution - and the solution is to use Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org instead of the software that came with their PC. That's worth emphasising - the solution to what ails almost all Windows users is not a switch to Linux (yet), but open source applications.

If we are to see the revolution in personal computing advance, I believe it's crucial for us to focus on the real pain points of real software users, the people who make you want to buy t-shirts like this. Those people don't want the source, they don't want to be geeks, they want to get liberated. We need to help by pointing them at that new trinity. And make it clear, for once and for all, that software freedom is what matters, and that open source is not Linux - and for them may not even include it.

posted at 11:17 PM (UK) | |

Comments:

in fact, there is a project called nvu that just wants to make mozilla composer into a standalone tool. it may well be equipped with firefox and thunderbird to make the new trinity (well maybe nvu is not available on many platforms now, including solaris).

openoffice.org is a little too big to compare with the other 2 which were born to simplify the mozilla suite. you may well say that OO.o, mozilla, and gimp can be a bundle. in this sense, gimp may need more features to support vector graphics, music and movie to make a full multimedia authoring suite.

# posted by :-o : 3:10 AM

Some additional observations: http://blogs.cocoondev.org/mpo/archives/002507.html -- mpo

# posted by Anonymous : 8:20 AM

Speedo: While you're right from an evolutionary perspective, people will only switch if the pain goes down for them. In the case of OpenOffice.org people get to inter-work with MS Office with little fuss and get a few extra features too (like PDF printing) so it's relatively easy to see why they should switch. Something like nvo is great for us geeks but doesn't get the job done for the family member.

mpo: I commented on your blog. You suggested that passive virus infection makes a switch to Linux smart, and while I agree I can't see friends-and-family doing it as their first step. I can just send them an email with links to downloads for the Trinity (oh for an installer for all three...) - installing Linux is a much bigger deal all round, from download to installation to usage.

# posted by webmink : 11:58 AM