marcello said:
Have you got any data to sustain your theory, like, uhm, a representative poll of pg user population?
first of all, let me say that i think it would be _great_ to have some way to survey project gutenberg users! might open a lot of eyes around here. (or probably not.) i've talked to a lot of people about project gutenberg, and discussed it on a lot of listserves over the years. since i'm not involved in it, and because i'm curious, i learn what people think; i hear the good and the bad. and you know what the biggest eye-opener was for me? it was last december, at the 10,000th-e-text gathering, when michael gave a talk at the berkeley public library. many of the attendees seemed to be just learning about the project; they were excited, but had some questions. the most frequent one revolved on how to read the e-texts. in other words, these people didn't even know how to open and read a text-file, or an .html file. and when greg had to try and explain a "zip" file, their eyes started to glaze over. we overestimate -- and that word is an understatement -- the sophistication of the audience far too frequently here. so i think it'd be great to open a communication pipeline between us and them, so we got to know them a bit better... anyway... my view on the factors that have made project gutenberg a success is based on listening to what michael himself says, coupled with some very-long-term observation of the many different e-book projects that have _failed_ along the way... the more they depended on tech not yet in the mainstream, the faster they plummeted. the more they depended on having the newest hardware, the faster they plummeted. the more they depended on special knowledge by the user, the faster they plummeted. the more they cluttered up the text with extraneous stuff -- including everything from proprietary formats to d.r.m. -- the faster they plummeted. yet michael's project -- which michael himself considers to be successful exactly because he stripped down to basics -- maintained its ground and grew just as he predicted it would. and today, most computer owners have grown totally weary of the need to constantly update, to buy new hardware and/or install complex new software. they are digging their heels in, deciding to make do with what they have. p.c. sales have been in _decline_ for years, after a decade-plus of yearly increases. and the situation will only get worse as things go from here. software has always grown the must-upgrade pie in the past, but there's just no money in it now, so the decline will spiral. when billy g. talks to his shareholders these days, he doesn't talk about his software; nope, he talks about his i.p. patents. "innovation" used to be his buzzword (albeit a very big lie), but now it's "licensing" (and this one we can surely believe). when the 800-pound gorilla decides to get in your way, beware. an absence of reasons to upgrade will make users dig in deeper. they'll live with what they've got, and we'll have live with that. and this is _not_ -- as some techies would have you believe -- because they are stupid, or don't want to "grow", it's because they don't want to always have to be updating their computer. just like some people like to tinker with their car -- great! -- but other people just want to get in it and drive somewhere... i'm from the mac side, where the mantra has always been "it just works", so maybe i'm biased, but it just _amazes_ me how much time the rest of the world spends _fiddling_. but guess what? you've used up all of the users' patience. if what you give 'em won't work without fiddling, forget it. and i'll kick this up to another level of abstraction as well. the reason _books_ -- paper ones -- have been so successful is because they are utterly and completely _simple_ to use. a child can learn how to use a book. the more difficulty that you tack onto electronic-books, the more you buck history... books have also been an instrument that let people _rise_. it's part of the philosophy underlying public library systems. when you move books out to a place where only new machines can access them, you're making a very bad political decision. instead of books closing the gap between the rich and the poor, they become another wedge making that gap bigger and bigger... e-texts "too cheap to meter" is michael's bedrock philosophy, and moving this library to a technological methodology that won't run on the trailing-edge -- let alone one that cannot even prove itself to _work_ -- does that philosophy grave disservice. in conclusion... what this means is that the new imperative is to "make it work" using the existing infrastructure, or you too will plummet, fast. and _that_ means that if you want to introduce some innovation, the obligation should be on you to prove that it works, first... the end-user is tired of being your guinea pig... -bowerbird