The Right to Choose
 

So, today I had an opportunity to hear an interesting lecture that talked about messaging. One thing that I hooked onto was this concept of choice vs. the right to choose. I think this is especially important as Maemo becomes mainstream.

Today, as described, maemo is all about being open, free and accessible. The benefit of this is a platform that embraces a diversity of ideas and sources of innovation. The downside of this is this degree of freedom is (or may be) considered cumbersome to the mainstream user. So I would like to start a conversation on what is more important.

Choice or the right to choose

Choice means that you have hundreds of options put in front of you and if you would like to be able to use any of these options, then you must find, test, build, etc.

The right to choose means that you are presented with a solution and if you want, you can go outside of this.

I will relate this to symbian... Choice was pre-ovi store. The right to choose was post-ovi store.

I know that there are many people who are passionate about both sides of the issue and would like to better understand. I apologize if my phrasing was too bias and will accept a better revision of either side.

Re: The Right to Choose
 

The problem with the option of Choice is that you are limited to the available choices - technically the old school Russian politics was one of choice but you only had a single choice to decide between!

The right to chooe is also any use if there is something out the as a viable option or you have the skills to provide one.

Personally? I'd prefer the right to choose and spend the time required to ensur that the option I want is for me!

Make sense?

Re: The Right to Choose
 

But then again, the problem with the right to choose is that you are limited by what is available to choose. Henry Ford offered you the right to choose a Model T in any color, but the only color Ford sold was black. If you wanted a different color, you could paint it yourself.

The right to choose when there are no choices is not always preferable.

Re: The Right to Choose
 

I guess I'm not understanding the dichotomy, sorry.

For "the right to choose" you say I can "go outside of this" - I understand this as if I don't like the solution I'm presented with, I can write my own app or use apps written by others. In fact, "the right to choose" sound exactly like "choices," plus you get a pre-built option to start with. If I were more of a developer, I'd call it Choices++.

So I'd go with that, but if I'm not understanding things correctly, please let me know.

Re: The Right to Choose
 

Maybe this is semantics but it would appear you were mixing up the options. The right to choose means not just the choices available but also something else you invent or nothing at all.

Re: The Right to Choose
 

Sounds as though someone has my point down pat

Re: The Right to Choose
 

I won't vote, since there's no correct answer.
The best thing is not either one of them, but a combination of both.
Userfriendly interface and gui for the standard enduser and on the other side a lot of api and libraries for developers.
And if you have that case & developers, who are actually using existing APIs for userfriendly guis, you have a working lifecycle.
Users are downloading apps, developers are uploading apps & the amount of apps is growing, growing and, correct, growing.

Re: The Right to Choose
 

bocaJ and Cherrypie sum it up pretty well for me. Now having said that, I'll go off on a slight tangent. Somehow the word "consumer" always bothered me. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I really feel like it comes with a lot of preconceptions attached. It always seemed like it was weird to classify people as "consumers" when in fact lots of them are contributing to Maemo in some way or another. Or maybe they're just users right now, but in the right circumstances they might get motivated to learn to program, or do a translation, design a UI or even just help others. I can't help but feel like this constant chrous of "consumers this" "consumers that" is selling people short and setting low expectations for them. I really don't know what to call them instead of "consumers" though. I've been thinking about a couple terms, but I think the most catchy one I've come up with is "people." :D Sorry to be off topic in your thread, matthewcc, especially since I think it's a worthwhile discussion.

-John

Re: The Right to Choose
 

I agree with the idea of bringing new people into the fold, but I worry about your use of the word "lots". I would hope that the N900 is successful enough that most of the people who buy it are not interested in participating in the community except to download software and ask questions.

That said, it does tie back to the issue. Most people who buy any product are interested in the choices available more than in the right to choose. If I'm looking for a desktop PC, almost all of them provide the right to choose. I can change the hard drive, the RAM, and even the CPU (not to mention adding various cards). However, most people (including myself for the most part) are interested in choice. They buy a computer that has the hard drive, RAM, and CPU they want and never open the case.

The right to choose is, in reality, just another item in the list of choices which any product offers or doesn't offer. If it's one of the only items, you have a problem. Nokia's product will suffer if all the product offers is potential.