Interview With Andreas Pour of KDE

friedmud writes "I just read a great interview over at OPEN for Business. It is with KDE contributor Andreas Pour. He goes over many topics - not only including KDE. My favorite part: 'they are basically saying, if you stop obeying us, we will stop you from viewing the documents you and your friends created. Who are they to say where and when I read my documents? Now I need a monopolist's permission to view my own creations? The audacity is mind-boggling, and that the Justice Department is permitting it is simply astounding.' - Wow"

Comments

Re:avoiding the subject?

[bogie]

Sorry but I have a few problems here.

"Well instead of discussing the usability problems of KDE and the huge installation issues"

What huge installation issues? I've always just followed the direction for my distro and not have any problems. I seem to recall looking at how many packages I had to download to upgrade Gnome not long ago and thinking how happy I was that KDE required like 1/5 as many packages. Every reviewer out their that I have seen has said that one of the few things that makes the transition from Windows to Linux a bit easier is the user friendliness of KDE.

"They have only themselves to blame for there lack of success."

Again what is the basis for this statement? The fact that KDE is the most widely used Linux gui that pretty much every distro has standardized on it? Sounds like sour grapes to me.

Re:I think he raises the interesting point...

[idiotnot]

This is something like patenting keys and locks. Obviously, if Microsoft ever tried to say something like: "No, you can't view your documents", I think the justice department would immediately step in and cry foul, much as if the person who invented the key demanded that all people who owned and used keys for operating locks pay him a surcharge or discontinue their use.

I'm not sure that Justice would be so quick to do that. The real concern is that a situation such as this would arise.....

1. You create document/opus/graphic with propriety tool X, document great_work.msx .
2. Propreitary software maker patents the file format, and includes methods (Palladium, anyone) which make it impossible to open in anything other than proprietary tool X.
3. You, as artist, no longer agree with the licensing terms (which changed during a bugfix that was automatically installed).
4. You're screwed.

Now, the old way of remedying this would be,
5. Write new program that can read file format so that you can continue to use your work, but then;
6. You've violated the DMCA if you do that.

It's not a pretty picture.

Re:avoiding the subject?

[NanoGator]

"Well instead of discussing the usability problems of KDE and the huge installation issues, he prefer to just go ahead and blame Microsoft. "

It's a pity, really. Few people here realize that MS's products demonstrate evolved wonderfully evolved usability. Yeah yeah, I know about the stability complaints and all. I'm not talking about productivity, I'm talking about usability. There's lots of things that both Windows and Office do right.

I'll give you an example of what I mean: If you take Internet Explorer, highlight a section of a web page, then paste it into Front Page, all of the HTML remains in tact. So if you're copying and pasting formatted text, you're not losing the formatting in the process. That's a good example of usability because it goes a little farther to give the user what they probably want.

Now, let me be clear about something: I did not say that MS made the right choice there. I'm not saying anything other than Windows/Office demonstrate that usability has been considered. (Note: Do not confuse the word term "considered" with "better than KDE", "best", "perfect", "good", etc...") After using KDE for a bit, it felt clunky... like I had to fight with it. As a matter of fact, I had trouble copying and pasting from a web page. I've heard a few people complain about that. I don't know if it's a problem anymore, nor do I care. It is only an example, please don't take it as KDE bashing. It could use a little more design work.

However, it is possible to be really obnoxious with usability, and MS has demonstrated that a number of times. That copy/paste example I used with IE/FP has serious drawbacks to it. They didn't think it all the way through. I copied/pasted some HTML I found on a website once into the HTML of the page I was working on. (as opposed to pasting it into the WYSIWYG interface...) Unfortunately, it wasn't smart enough to realize that I just wanted the plain-text translation of it, so it pasted the HTML that made the code look all pretty in the page, not the HTML itself I wanted to bring over. I had to paste it into Notepad, then re-copy it. It's 'usability' seriously got in my way. Unfortunately, that happens all too often because I wasnt using FrontPage the way MS assumed I would.

Here lies the problem with MS's forms of usability: They work great, only if you're doing exactly what MS thought you might want to do. This forces you to understand exactly how MS products are working internally, and that is not acceptable. I would love to see KDE take a few cues from MS on usability, but I do NOT want it to take too many of them. You can reach a point where you take a hit on productivity, MS has reached that point a number of times.

Re:I think he raises the interesting point...

[Master Bait]

It takes at least 5 years to fight a patent. By the time you win, the bad guys have secured another similar patent and the game begins again.

Re:User interaction overrated.

[fferreres]

Great, so because it's OSS and because some people work in their free time, they should not listen to anyone that requests feature X or state that they need to accomplish Y.

The day a developer stops listening to user requests directly or indirectly and starts to do whatever he likes most (in their free or payed time) is the day I'll want to switch to something else (personal choice here).

People usually don't ask for a response, they just ask for someone to listen to what they need. For a large project this may mean some people specialize in just that (communication between the org and the users) and for a small project these may be the same people developing.

I think developers will benefit from users feeback *if they know how to handle it*, and that does not necesarily mean they should be the users bitches or anything like that. There is no magic solution. They key is to be able to listen to good requests and ideas, ditch the bad ideas and have a way to balance the time it takes to read these and do actual work.