<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 5:23 AM, Derek O'Connell <<a href="mailto:doconnel@gmail.com">doconnel@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
I believe the idea of exclusive content (whatever that may be) is not<br>
a solution to funding. In fact I think it will even have the opposite<br>
effect of alienating many of the *178* who bothered enough to vote.<br>
Much better to foster a more *inclusive* community spirit and try to<br>
increase that number a 100 times. </blockquote><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Squeak has been around more than 10 years now. It's not evident to me that the community is significantly larger today than it was just a couple years after its debut. As for alienating, I don't see anything exclusive or alienating about this approach.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Then you may have the critical mass<br>
to offer value-added extras. Blender is a good example and despite<br>
past failures it now seems to be doing pretty well. </blockquote><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Blender happened under almost the exact same circumstances that I propose, only by accident (and on a much longer timeframe than I would envision).</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Outside of the<br>
product itself, I put most of Blenders success down to the very<br>
vibrant BlenderArtists FORUM with "over 20,000 registered users". IMHO<br>
a modern style forum is essential these days as I suspect most of the<br>
younger generation are simply not inspired by mailing lists. There is<br>
a sense of "congregating" around a forum while a mailing-list appears<br>
as a somewhat intrusive cluttering of already busy mailboxes. It would<br>
also help if there was a more visible focus on new users and usability<br>
in general.</blockquote><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>This is a different topic...but, yes, I'm with you on it...anything that could enhance the community experience would be a good thing.</div>
<div> </div><div>- Stephen</div></div>