Re: Re: planning 2.0? (was re: Google...)

Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> An idle thought: it might be a good idea to also think what
> will differentiate Arch 2 from its competition.  There are a lot
> of distributed version control systems with roughly the above
> properties these days; everyone will want to know what makes Arch 2
> different, so might as well work out a good answer up front.
>
>   

Right on.  I totally agree.   The question is how do we come up with that
answer?

My suggestion has been to start by identifying target markets and their
needs.

We have some general ideas about what Arch is about.  I posted that list
that you are replying to.   There is already some (low-level, esoteric)
differentiation in that list -- the stuff on which differentiation from 
the user
perspective can be built.

By looking more at target markets and their needs, we can figure out
what we can do that will set Arch apart from the customer perspective.

> In the business analogy, you need differentiating features to
> compete successfully; in the allocation-of-volunteer-resources
> game, it seems valuable to sit down and articulate the reasons
> why it is better to start a new project from scratch instead of
> contributing missing pieces to an existing project.  Plus, it'd
> be just plain interesting to read :-).
>
>   
I'll leave your message marked for reply in my inbox.  I might come back
to that paragraph.

-t