[Gnu-arch-users] Barriers to Adoption: exponential userbase size increases

[Zenaan Harkness]

> 1) Deferring to a tiny installed base instead of focusing on
>    eliminating barriers to adoption

I tend to agree.

This reminds me of a theory (/article) I read some years back
(perhaps it was Joel On Software, but I don't remember sorry)
that each barrier to entry (eg. reading incumbent file format,
writing incumbent file format, matching (or providing option
for) incumbent keyboard shortcuts, UI layout, etc) _doubled_
the potential userbase, and therefore the number of actual
adopters of your alternative/ new program.

So eliminating any one barrier would take you from "very niche"
to "not so niche", but eliminating three barriers would
substantially increase the userbase - by an order of magnitude.

The result (of the theory) is that there is an exponential
relationship between the number of barriers to adoption
eliminated, and the userbase size.

And of course the networking effect of the more users, the
more users who want to use it because of the number of
existing users.

cheers
zen