Will Open Source Ever Become Mainstream?

Prabhu Ramachandran asks: "I am a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley and as part of a course project I am trying to gather comments on the following question: Will the Open Source and Free Software communities develop software that will find widespread adoption amongst the mainstream, or is such software, by its nature, suitable only for sophisticated users? As part of my literature survey I found an academic perspective that seemed to indicate that open source projects do not reach the mainstream because the developers tend to listen only to their smartest customers. There also seems to be a lack of detailed documentation and an easy-to-use interface which normally attract the not-so-sophisticated users. I would like to hear the thoughts of Open Source developers and others on this issue. If you would like to view my references or the comments posted on a website hosted for this purpose, please visit my website." There have already been some interesting comments posted on his website. What is your take on this issue?

Comments

distinction

[sstory]

There are two very different sides to Open Source as it relates to the mainstream. There's haxor open source, and there's red hat open source. haxor open source comes up with arcane and impractical things like emacs. Left to its own devices, that sort of thing will never achieve mainstream popularity, becaues it's not efficient--for the average user it requires too much time and learning, while delivering too little. The very different other aspect is the red hat open source, where there's a company standing between the haxors and the average person. This a) prevents people from seeing, and justifiably running away from, the haxors, and b) enables haxors to be paid to deal with the boring, unsexy issues, like making drivers easier to manage, which otherwise wouldn't happen. This aspect has some chance of success.