discussion:Goals Round II

[Mike Prince]

Thank you Kyle for distilling the goals.  Let's continue this 
process for the remainder of this week, using the following list as our 
new basis.

> End Users/Marketing Goals:
> 
> - must be a friendly intuitive UI
> - must have a lot of productivity apps (mail, wp, spreadsheet, ie necessary
>   apps)
> - must fill a strategic niche (i.e. choose our customers well)
> - must be maleable (no set ui, easy to personalize)
> - use all the available resources (over net too)
> - all the above must remain constant over all platforms (who cares what
>   hardware they are using).  My app here runs on all my platforms.  No
>   multiple shrinkwrap copies.

> Programmers/Marketing goals
> 
> - must have a good development environment
> - must be able to use all available resources (look above too)
> - persistency:  This is not really addressed by the above, it could be
>   considered to be part of the user friendliness thing.  Critics loved
>   the way the Mac saved its state when you shut it down...  This takes 
>   all that one step further, not only is the ui the same, but the apps
>   and all objects in the system are exactly the way you left them.

> Implementation/Design Guidelines:
> 
> - separate mechanism from policy
> - support standards where feasible
> - simple, portable strategies
> - include marketable things, not gee whiz features

> Organization Guidelines:
> 
> - keep the overhead to a minimum
> - need balance between decision making speed and fairness
> - projects need to be able to share ideas/code/beer
> - projects need to be independent due to 'net constraints
> - keep marketing in mind, "It must sell well"
> - we need a name

NOTE:  I have left out the methods section so as not to encourage debate 
about those items.  As soon as our goals are settled then we should begin 
to address the methods.

One last note.  Please either add items to the above list, or refute 
items.  One reason I just summarized all the previously posted goals 
suggestions was the nature of the posts; they tended to go into great 
depth and at times were tangental.  It was very difficult to do justice 
to all the great feedback we've been getting AND to create a distilled 
list of goals.

Again, I apologize if the new list has left out goals that you felt were 
important.  Now is the time to re-suggest them and have them re-instated 
into the list.

I look forward to hearing your comments about the goals,

Mike