Reactions From Other People to News of OpenMoko

[Robert Michel]

Salve Bryan!

You gave an interesting report about the reactions - thank you :)

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Bryan Fink wrote:

> Hi all.  I've been talking up OpenMoko to everyone I know, and I felt
> like there may be some people around here who would be interested in
> the reactions I've gotten.

> Finally, by far the largest camp is the indifferent class.  Many
> people are quick to ask, "Why would you want an open source phone?"
> Answers of the, "So I know exactly what my phone is doing at all times
> - no secrets," variety typically get you labeled paranoid.  Answers of
> the, "Because I will be able to modify absolutely anything about it,"
> yield further questions to which further answers like, "I don't know,
> but *something*," are not enough.  And, there's always the, "Well, I'm
> perfectly happy with what I have now," people.

Just my 2cents:

For non-coder or those who never used the power of "apt-get install"
it sounds to complex, to complicated - they are used to buy a product 
and most mobil phones are sold with advertisment about 2-3 features
-2 mega-pix camera
-FM radio
-2 games

So freedom is everything and nothing. 

The idea that the GPS chips serves the information where you are now,
and that the phone profile changed by localisation, time and maybe
activity/noise.... is to fare away from normal advertisment slogans.

So talking about ideas "what will possible to do" is not realy
convincing normal uses (I think) this has to wait until you could 
demonstrate the first examples...

I think freedom to configurate something will frighten most users,
also the need to learn something (new) - even when anonymous callers
are disturbing the users - they will say "I'm perfectly happy with
what I have now - insteat of saying that they are afraid about something
new"

But they are right, why should they learn every 1-2 years a new menue
of a mobile phone?

IMHO we will win normal users when they got a feeling that they have
not be afraid of knowing not so much like the coders, that they could
benefit from using OpenMoko/Neo1973 and that every start and every step
is easy. This could take some time untill OpenMoko/Neo1973 becomes
full usabel __without__ coders/linux-admin knowledge ;)

And it belongs to us, how fast OpenMoko/Neo1973 will become usable
like Ubuntu (or even more easy...) - so please let us going on to
reflect how normal users thing about OpenMoko/Neo1973.

Greetings,
rob