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Open Source Needs Leadership?
alessio writes: "At Webmonkey there is an article from Jay Greenspan which reports from Open Source Conference 2001, and I cannot agree with 99% of what he says. However, there is a point worth of discussion: do the Open Source/Free Software movement need a 'leadership' to better fight back new stuff from Redmond? His answer is yes, my would be no, but maybe it's not obvious."
Great post!
I think that we don't need a Leader, but more of a humongous to-do list, and try to convince the developers to be a bit more focussed on what needs to be done, instead of what *can* be done. IMHO it's, just like you say, a complete waste of energy to develope yet another tool (editor, IDE, debugger, MP3 player, CD-player, shell, etc). Choice is good, too much choice is spilled energy!
To my mind, the more important leaders of the OS/Free movement are the leaders of headline projects. Linus Torvalds is the most obvious, but people like Miguel de Icaza are also important. It's these guys who actually provide a focus and a vision for the abundant supply of open source labour that would otherwise go to waste. They provide actual goals and actual directions for the community to follow, which results in getting something done. The philosophers like Stallman are important (and I realize they've contributed significantly on the practical side), but the ultimate goal of OSS is to produce software that people like and use, not write treatises. That's how we'll achieve Total World Domination.
To those who wish the community to go in a certain direction I would say: do what Torvalds and ESR (and the Mono guys) did (albeit somewhat unintentionally in Torvalds' case). Create the beginnings of a project that embodies your ideas and put it up for your peers to assess and maybe contribute to. And be prepared to take on the administrative duties (filtering, reviewing and applying patches mainly) that go with keeping the project going. It doesn't matter if it sucks or not, that's for others to decide. If it sucks, no one will contribute and the project will go nowhere, no harm done.
Looks like this guy just doesn't get it.
1: Free software (& 'open source') is not about killing Microsoft. Microsoft is bent on screwing the user over for as much cash as they can take. Free software is about freeing the user from that domination, and giving the user control of their own software destiny.
2: Leader? We don't need to steenking leader! This is a grassroots movement in what is probably the most egalitarian forum ever devised. If you can write good code, people respect that. What's a leader going to do? Enforce project timelines? Talk to the press? We've already got lots of people doing that e.g.: RMS & ESR.
3: Left to themselves, the people writing the code will go through their own darwinian selection process. Some projects will gain at the expense of others, some will merge, some will die, some will co-exist. This process takes time, (sometimes _too_long_), but so what? If you want something to move faster, contribute to it! With so many good coders contributing to the community, the richness and quality of Free Software accretes over time. At some point, the sheer mass of high-quality free software will overwhelm the ability of proprietary software to compete. This is already starting to happen with Linux vs. proprietary Unix, and will likely happen in other areas in the next few years.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
Take a look at his premature eulogy for Slashdot. Take what he says with a pinch of salt, folks.
OK, I'll take a look.
"The camaraderie and high spirits will soon be replaced by the same rancor and factiousness that permeates the rest of the capitalist world."
Hang on, are you saying Jay was wrong with this prediction??
Ahh... "organizations" (e.g. Microsoft, IBM, etc) derive from the word "organize". Despite how much you may hate Microsoft and Adobe, they have something that is really fundamental to growth, organization.
I have found in my own "big business" experience that not everything that goes on at the big business level is "right" or "the best way of doing things" but things still get done. What any business needs is a management chain that understands the best ways AND does them. Some companies have this, some don't, and some fall in the middle.
The problem with OSS has been stated, waring distros, KDE vs GNOME, 10+ window managers, 10+ distros, 10+ console text editors, 3 browsers, etc etc etc... the list can go on forever. If OSS was made into an organizational unit, these things would be minimized (or maybe 2-3 organizational units). For instance, why do we need 10 text editors? We don't... we have "preferences" but I think newbies "prefer" pico because it's easy to use (okay dont argue that XYZ is easier than pico, it's not the point).
In an organizational unit, a group of people would sit down and evaluate (to the best of their abilities) how one solution outperforms another solution. They'd run performance tests, user tests, and more importantly how easy it is to maintain a particular set of code. Once they've added everything together, they'd choose a single text editor, linux distro, etc etc.
Where, right now, let's say there are 10 text editors, each has a group of 3 people working on it. If we were to evaluate and eliminate the worthless projects (as an organization would do) we can better pool our resources together so we can have 2 maybe 3 text editors, each with 10 to 15 people working on them. Doing this increasing the time and manpower each project has and increases the power, flexibility, and usefulness of the application.
Someone mentioned the *BSD distros, there being too many of them, well there are only really 3 major ones, but then the comment was made about Theo. I don't really know Theo and I haven't spoken to him, but I don't think many of you have either. Theo had disputes with people, which he felt were strong enough to leave a particular project and start OpenBSD. This has been done all over the Linux community as well on multiple projects, so to say Theo is the only one who "can't get along" is rediculous.
Right now, every Linux project is like a bunch of a warring factions. This is a form of anarchy, and it has proven through history that anarchies do not do well in the bigger scheme of things.
The linux community, as a whole, needs some kind of organization.. and I don't mean letting Linus and Cox run the show. We need people who are business-oriented and not technical to run the organization. This way decisions can be made to better utilize the resources of the Linux community.
Isn't it already taken for granted that the "open source" design methodology is not an instant panacea, but still needs rules, goals, milestones, leadership, etc.? One only need observe that most of the successful open source projects have rather anti-"free for all" leadership - the Linux kernel passes through the judgement of one or two human beings, Apache foundation is pretty strict, the BSD structures are rather hierarchical and dense near the top, and just do a cursory search on SourceForge to find tens (probably hundreds?) of projects who are at the stage: "planning to think about sometime writing down an opinion on how to clone something for which there are already a gazillion clones". It's a bazaar in a cathedral man - a bazedral!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
But while you're looking at places like FreshMeat.net, you might also notice that many of these endeavours reflect the wide variety personalities and desires that comprise the Open Source movement. In other words, in many ways, many Open Source softwares are the unique artistic expression of the individuals behind them. Instead of stroking paint and palette, we blast bits and bytes. And instead of museums and art stores, we the internet and individual computers as our showplace.
My fear is that bringing Open Source under a centralized effort _MAY_ have as chilling effect as Communism did on the arts in the former Soviet Union.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Your list is hardly a list of LEADERS. A list of oppertunists, yes. Leaders, no.
RMS comes the closest. He stays on target when he talks. Yet, the FSF had their spokesperson whine that *RMS was not invited to the Open Source conference*, yet RMS is the 1st to say "GNU/GPL is not Open Source". (if you are not Open Source, tell everyone that, THEN don:t get invited to an Open Source conference, your message is being heard and understood)
ESR spends his time promoting GNU/Linux, but when asked, he says "BSD deserves more press than it gets". Yet, ESR will not lift a finger to get BSD more press. But, hey, free trips to speak on GNU/Linux, why mess that up with being inclusive rather than exclusive eh?
Bruce Perens has a web page where he talks about how he is all for Open Source. Yet, when you read his works, all he does is talk about the GPL. In fact, he admits that he is "linux advocate". Again, so much for being inclusive.
Miguel de Icaza referes to the GNOME project and the MONO efforts as "Linux software". Yet, the main GNOME web page point out that it is Open Source, and runs on MANY platforms.....the software is not "Linux Software".
OSDN. It is not about Open Source as it is about Linux. Same goes for the Open Source development Lab (Yea, the one funded by Red Hat) Call it the Linux lab or the Lnux development network if you are unwilling to be inclusive.
Tim O`Reilly is a better leader for Open Source than the others. Mr. O`Reilly says Linux when he manes Linux, and when he says Open Source, he includes BSD/Artistic/X licensed software.
Unlike the "other" "leaders" who wrap themselfs up in a cape of "open source leader" because it gives them a soapbox to preach from. Or, puts some money in their pocket.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
That said, he has a few good points he makes regarding lack of consolidated leadership. Interestingly, OpenSOurce is about distributied activities - namely, distributed development. What we're finding here is that regardless of how well distributed development may work, distributed leadership doesn't work. As much as it pains me to say this, the OSS comunity needs to adopt a more corporate style hirarchical leadership model, sith some accountability built in. It fas fascinatinf to me that Microsoft was the consolidating force inthe OSS comunity for those first few months after Mundie's initial speech in which he bashed the GPL and made the initial announcement of the Microsoft PR initiative known as Shared Source. Imediately after this, there was a consolidated, well reasoned and organized response. Since then though, things have deteriorated substancially.
OSS likes to organize itself into projects - perhaps we need the OSS Political Action Comittee Project, who's mission it is to raise awareness andprovide a unified political direction for member software projects.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I think along with leadership, we need restraint and critical thinking. It's a lot more exciting to start your own massive infrastructure project than to work with someone else, but there are only so many available smart-person hours around. I think the chasing tail lights assessment of OS was correct to some extent. Spend some time every day thinking about ways to change this. It's hard but there are a lot of us.
The last thing OS needs is leadership - plenty of that to go around, and really why should any of us listen to any particular leader? That's the way companies work and it doesn't make any sense to adopt that model.
What OS needs is strategy - some group to say "I believe strongly in a goal of X. If we has OS projects A, B, C, and D we could achieve that goal - here are a list of projects currently closest in line with these goals, we plead with those in the community to take up the remaining tasks."
Thus strategic needs would thus be met through a structure that mirrors the way OS projects themselves work - there could be any number of strategic groups dedicated to different goals, each painting a picture of how a specific set of applications can help move everyone forward. These groups could also make enhancement requests for projects they see as fitting the mission in order to help unify sets of applications to some degree.
This idea is only half thought out and obviously has some issues but I think overall it's pretty sound and would give rise to a number of all OS based business "solutions" composed of many apps.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Open Source needs detail-oriented, small-time, painstaking *work*. Not vision, not tirades against the Evil Empire of Redmond, not manifestos. It needs a lot of people to sit down and clean things up. Small things, things that collectively annoy the user, but individually are too boring for an OSS developer to bother with.
That's how good software, how good *anything* gets done. The OSS way however, has been that for something to be refined, polished, it has to "scratch an itch", it has to annoy someone enough *and* have that someone be skilled or talented enough to go fix it him/herself.
How do you get people to work on minute trivial things that they normally donot care about? the one time-tested way is, well, to *pay* them to do it. Where do you get the money? well, you will probably need a corporate structure that will fund these developers and that will be able to stand on its own two feet.
In other words you need companies, companies like Active State, theKompany, Digital Creations (now Zope) and a few (very few) others. You need to let companies sell OSS without bitching all the time that they are ruining your free lunch. You need to let companies have pay-to-play versions that are ahead of the OSS one so that they can financially support development, QA and documentation. You need to have companies have non-GPL licenses on their products without going Homeini on them.
Preferrably all of the above do not involve flammage and mail-bombing and invocations of Rights and Freedom. Writing software is not Speech, it is *not* equivalent to expressing one's opinion on common matters ("politics", people call them). Writing software is hard, painful and mostly boring work, engineering work. It needs good design, a painstaking devotion to quality and most of all someone to be paying that budget.
Unfortunately, (as can be seen here) only very few stretches of DNA are known for penguins!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
We did not get to the place we are with a leader. What we need to do, is continue to write, debug, improve and release code under the fearsome GPL. If anything, faster than before.
What you people really need is to change the stereotypical image that most IT departments have of the Linux community.
Stop acting like children. Stop crying about everything Microsoft does (Hell even Sun has SOME restraint when it comes to that).
The Operating System market is NOT Cuba and Linus/RMS is NOT Fidel Castro. Until you learn the simple fact that you must show respect towards your competitors in order to be respected, you guys will always just be Fringe Fanatics.
Gam
"Flame at Will"
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
While Bill Gates may be the person that many of us love to hate, he is the icon of Microsoft, and puts a human face on an otherwise impersonal corporation. He just looks unassuming, and mild mannered... kind of a "geek next door" look.
If someone in the open source community were to step forward to become the poster boy and PR representative to counter the FUD that Gates distributes to the media, it would probably help immensely.
Of course, with a 20 in charisma, he's going to be rather hard to defeat.
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
The fanatics however, who think politics instead of just sourcecode, need a leader, to 'fight' (haha, it's sourcecode, not a war) whatever they declare an enemy.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
It took me towo pages to find that OS did not stand for Operating Sytem (as it usually does) but for Open Source.
It would be nice if articles that describe Operating Systems and Open Source at the same time find it usefull to be a bit more clear about it.
In all other sciences it is custom to explain abbreviations in the text at least once.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
There is no reason why we cannot pursue all the options you have listed. We have many times more developers than Microsoft. Not all options will be correct, of course, but one of them likely will be, and it will succeed.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Kill him, mod him down, GPL him.
Ignore his heretical(although well thought out and reasoned) arguments.
Be different from the rest by being just like every other fat manchild living in their parent's houses.
It's in the nature of the open source movement that there's no-one who can actually appoint leaders. But don't we already have de facto leaders? People like ESR, RMS, Perens, O'Reilly etc. who speak up for open source when there is some controversy? In fact, Jay Greenspan seems to acknowledge this in his article.
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A leader is a figure head for a community. You can 't put the entire open source community into a room with all the other citizens of the united states and sign bills and pass laws everyone can agree on. No, you need one, or a few, people to represent the community. We need a leader to talk to politicians, senators, etc. Other leaders who need to be convinced of our ideas.
Yes I did say the 'P' word, politics. Most of the people in this world can't understand technology, and so that's why we need politics, to convince all the techno-illiterate that technology is really a good thing. Do you really want to convince your average human being about your standpoint on technology? Read this first.
The OpenSource community needs an intermediary to water down its views of technology so that the average person can understand it. There's more stupid people in the world than techno-literate people.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
With abusive leaders also comes the cronyism and worse ... the bureaucrats that can take a fast moving project and/or movement and grind it down to a painful crawl.
I mean are there that many hills we have to charge up, is someone throwing the ball, is the system that broke that we need to attempt fix it with a leader ?
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
in my experience, Open Source apps are usually more intuitive and more stable than the professional ones I've seen. Lotus Notes in particular takes the booby prize as the least intuitive app with the most horribe UI I've ever run across.
That being said, I do have to wonder why Lokisoft's dialogs are the exact reverse of everyone else's in terms of button placement. They always put cancel on the left. What's up with that? I've bitched at them about it several times (I forgot to corner Draeker and ask him about it at the last CLIQ.) I've never got a response with an explanation, though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You need leaders if you want to lead the market...
I think the issue of leadership that rises with open source project is often the lack of focus. People code what they feel is missing, or what they feel like coding. This means the devellopement follow a more organic and darwinist path, not a strategic one.
I don't think that the organic way is worse than the strategic way. While things might be less focuses, they also are not so easily distracted by fads. Sure people will add new skins and UI gimicks to programs, but those who believe their software should do this or that will simply not change ways because this or that is the fad.
I would say that the main issue nowadays with open source is simply political. Most people I know that program something open source do it because they feel it is missing, or they want to fiddle with the code or notion, or want a variant of this or that, or a doing research in universities. They have only a vague political vision - they certainly don't do it to overthrow microsoft - it might be a nice side effect, but it's not the main motivation - they do things for themselves.
But of course this does not fit with the dominant capitalism credo. And this psychology is not liked by the media: can't do headlines with people doing things in their corner because they feel like it. Real geeks don't go to discuss with the media, they code in the basement...
What happens is simply the corporations noticing that open source does not behave they way a corporation does, big surprise. So of course they think that if open-sources wants to take strategic positions in the market it should have strategic leadership...
Of course this premise is broken, because open-source is a good approach do build sturdy systems which might not make economical sense (at least for MS), most killer apps where first closed source. Eventually, an open-source contender came, but generally the original app was closed source. I don't think this will change tomorow, but then again I don't think this is tragical.
It's easy to convince people to code to get their PC and their hardware do this or that - to support a card, or to crash less, or to build a clone of this cool game, or to have a window manager like this system. It's another game to convince them to build a framework whose goal is not so clear...
Warning: Rant: The biggest problem with open source is user interface. I see plenty of programmers involved, but few UI experts, let alone serious usability testing. Until this happens, I'm sorry, but open source doesn't have a chance. Done mark me as a "traitor". I'm a big fan of the open source movement, but I'm also a programmer with 22 years in the field. The fact that most open source software is difficult for me to use is proof enough. Sorry, but that's the cold hard facts.
MS has 48,000 employees, and carries a product line of over 1,200 products. 48k may seem big, but really, its not a lot. Half of those are active engineers.
The other half are lawyers.
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Besides, what is peoples obsessions with writing dull essays and "papers" about the topic du jour. Write some bloody code, instead of feeding the techie webs insatiable appetite for content, usually (as in this case) the same six or seven ideas endlessly rehashed.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Open source doesnt need a leader. We already have a leader. OURSELVES. Open source lets ANY one of us become a leader, if, by ability and personality, we are capable of it. Why appoint anyone? The fluid leadership status of various projects gives those projects a far greater dynamic than a project where you are forced to work under someone, regardless of their suitability.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
Running Gnome on NetBSD SPARC here.
I'm tired of the attitude that there's some kind of open source vs. closed source war going on, which is pushed by the popular media. There is not.
If there is a genuine need for something, or an interest in an open source version of some technology, then someone can build it. But don't make open source out to be some kind of single-minded mission. There are many many different kinds of people with different interests that happen to do open source work. To me, this is a bottom-up self organizing process, not anything that needs one leader or governing body and global strategies. That will never work! So what if there are ten .NET-like projects? So much the better I
think.
Hackers dislike authority. Welcome to anarchy, baby.
I think this antagonistic attitude is very destructive. The best stuff comes out of need and genuine interest in developing good software.
Fair competition is good, but rememember that the people developing closed source applications are people too before you pick up that gun! In fact, some of us do it as our day job.
-Kevin
I'm writing a mp3 jukebox right now, there are dozens I could have downloaded, but none had the features I was looking for.
Ahhh, you're just saying that cos you're old-skool, Stormie (not that I'm bitter that your UID# is only 1/2 as long as mine or anything).
But I have a fine counter to your argument; I'm currently posting to Slashdot from work, i.e. it's still preferential hanging out here than it is actually joining in with the "capitalist world" : )
Disclaimer: vague generalities and wooly arguments follow:
I've recently watched some war documentaries, read some stuff about history, some films like Napoleon, etc. etc -- the totality of which has formed in me the impression that:
People in the field know what's going on. Distributed units can take advantage of local situations as they change. Autonomous units can do things which advancing columns can't. Rapid reaction requires an ear to the ground and the autonomous authority to carry out immediate maneuvers and strategies. The Queen Bee doesn't direct her troops, but they independently seek out targets and communicate with each other. Etc. Etc. (add your own here)
Basically, the world is too big... and we can't just stand on a hilltop like Napoleon did, directing the battle as he surveyed the field laid out neatly in front of him. Today's hilltop is the boardroom, and comfy chairs -- hardly the same.
Ok, so please flesh out this wooly argument of mine with some concrete knowledge and examples of your own.
PS. I haven't read the article.
Looking over the last 7 years of Windows development,, the .Net runtime to me is a fruition of all the OCX/Active X/OLE initiatives: a way for all Windows programming languages to share code easily. C#, VB, C++, Delphi, Perl, Python: all can create code that can be used in other languages, easily. This is a huge advantage to MS and to programmers - everyone leveraging everyone else's code
.NET Microsoft is going to be eating Open Source's lunch? OSS is wasting time re-writing, while MS builds a pluggable component architecture, letting programmers everywhere leverage each other's work, no matter what the language.
The problem i see with open source, especially Linux, is that no person thought of bringing the same to that world. No one has created their own CLR that everyone can add into, sharing code much more easily and helping each other more: which would be a truly open source ideal.
Instead, in ONLY 1 shocking example, there still isn't even a unified ODBC standard in Linux - totally unbelievable. Perl, Python, Lisp, on and on, each have to create their own interfaces to databases - tens of thousands of lines of code re-written over and over again to do the SAME thing.
Do you see, just from this 1 example, that with
I think that is why the writer was complaining there is no leadership in OSS. Why didn't someone think of this before for the OSS world? Why are you still programming in the dark ages, like in the ODBC example? And Mono isn't the answer, as Ximian won't be around long enough to make it happen, and it isn't innovative at all, it is just a copycat.
alex
Bow down before me and worship.
Go forth and develop software that is good and plentiful.
Send me donations.
Live long and prosper.
Be nice to each other.
Who's with me?
Or, y'know, alternatively we could continue to fight on all fronts exactly as we've been doing already (and people do actually seem to be making money after all). Anyway, who the hell wants to spend their spare time working for a giant multinational Linux Corp? Not me.
BTW, I think I should point out that Jay's doesn't always hit the mark quite right. Take a look at his premature eulogy for Slashdot. Take what he says with a pinch of salt, folks.
.. was the object of open source to "fight back against Redmond"? Sure, if they create some new product that's a good idea, theres no reason not to implement our own open version. This happens all the time. But if Microsoft released "Inflatable Dartboard v1.0" I get the impression that some jerk would release a free version, just because they feel the need to compete with MS.
From my point of view, I just want tools to get the jobs done that I need to do. If those tools happen to be similar to something released by MS, then fine. If not, thats just fine too. In my opinion, some of the best free software is that which was created to fill a niche of its own, not to compete against MS.
"But now, as we move into the next phase of the Internet, it's time to pick one overall strategy and stick to it. If OS continues on its lovably factioned way, it risks losing its important role in the future of the Internet."
Here read: ".NET is coming out, should there be Linux support?". This article was not about leadership for Open Source, it's about supporting M$ technologies - and this arguement has already happened with all the other Ximian/Mono articles that came out before this one. ( = 'bandwagon' + 'missed')
"Can O'Reilly, Stallman, and others agree on one approach and convince others to follow it"
Short answer: 'no'. It being Open Source, some people may want to work on supporting stufflikethis(tm), other mights not - but there should never be anyone standing up and saying 'Open Source should/should not support this project, and any work done to provide this support is valid/invalid.'
At the end of the day, it's going to be a bigger audience than this who decides whether it was worthwhile or useful.
insignificant sig
Who cares about this, for crying out loud? Such 'commentators' should matter little to the OS movement. I am sick and tired (and sick and tired) of hearing the same old arguments from the same old, tired hacks, who have to make a living somehow. The strength of the open source movement is it's variety and this very lack leadership that everybody so bemoans. The current set-up leads to an anarchic, chaotic, but often happy and innovative playground the open source used to sit quite happily, before we discovered the what the initials VC stood for. The reason OS works is because it moves fast and sometimes in unexpected directions. Innovations are always going to come from this kind of background, and thank goodness for that. The OS movement is a testing ground, and ultimately a killing ground for ideas that don't work. Where movement OS leads, commercial concerns follow. Let's keep that way. Not stultify it with this Western Obsession with top-down hierarchies. Celebrate diversity, not uniformity.
Linux is a reimplementation of UNIX. The whole GNU tool suite is basically reimplementations of the UNIX Programmer's Workbench from the 1970s. "vi", claimed by some to be innovative, is a reimplementation of an overpriced product called the RAND Editor. X windows is a second system approach to the early UNIX window systems.
During the brief period that Linux companies had money, we didn't see much vision, either. Nobody came out with a desktop system that looked good and was easy to use. Nobody got a top graphic designer and a top interaction designer (yes, there are such people, and you should know who they are) to rework the user interface. The open source industry blew its chance to take on Microsoft.
That's the real problem.
But there used to be many corporations competing with MS. Most are either gone (DRI), bought (Lotus, WordPerfect) or have given up (IBM). I'd bet at least half the people writing open-source would like to start companies and get funding for what they do.
But it's not going to happen. Venture capitalists don't want to fund MS competitors, because experience shows too much likelihood of failure. So the people who want to write operating systems, or word-processors, or GUI toolkits just do it for fun, supporting themselves with work in other areas.
And rather than look for the limitations, I think it's damned amazing how good lots of the free stuff is.
Great! Should I tell the user testing labs to bill the facilities, time, gratuities, food and tapes to you?
People don't seem to get the fact that user interface design isn't something you do at home in your underwear. It requires real-world data. There's no way to get that data without spending money.
Tim
Choice is good, fragmentation is bad.
It sounds like you're saying: If KDE and Gnome both produce a desktop, that's wasted effort. But if Microsoft and Corel both produce an office suite, that's competition and choice for the user. I don't see how those two statements can be compatible.
The shareholder is always right.
I said it takes money to do good UI design, that it can't be done by lone programmers in a vacuum, and that it takes observation of real users. You respond that that's nonsense, because Apple and Microsoft had to spend a lot of money, techies can't do it themselves, and it comes down to the real users.
As far as I can tell, we're agreeing, but your message is somehow phrased as a flame against mine.....
Tim
Gee...in their rush to bash MS, they left out the Motif "check" boxes. They piss me off everytime I see them. They are either one shade or blue or another, with a little beveling that makes it ambigious as to whether they are pushed in or not.
In my experience Open Source apps are no better (or no worse) than many of the winders apps out there. There are some gems and there are some turds...on both sides of the fence.
I happen to think that's wrong -- not everyone in the open source community needs/wants the same thing. I happen to be very jealous of my CPU cycles; so I don't use either. I'm sure there are similar differences that help people make the choice between KDE/GNOME (I don't really know the specifics of how they're different.) I wouldn't want One True Desktop, as I'm pretty much guaranteed that it wouldn't be what I want, and many others feel the same way.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?