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

Take suggestions from dumbasses?

[pete-classic]

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.

Wow. There's a recipie for failure.

-Peter

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[nyet]

infighting, bashing, selfish, attention-grabbing individuals

You've never worked on a large, *closed source*, commercial, proprietary software project before have you?

Re:It IS mainstream already

[NDPTAL85]

Mac OS X is open source "enough". Now back off you grubby lookin unshaved unwashed OSS hippie!

Re:It IS mainstream already

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Joe User ever be able to sit down at a given open source workstation (i.e. - Linux on the desktop) and find enough consistency ... such that he/she can get something done . . .

Yes. It's called a TIVO

"I know this!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Joe User ever be able to sit down at a given open source workstation (i.e. - Linux on the desktop) and find enough consistency with every other open source workstation such that he/she can get something done without spending countless hours reading HOWTOs, message boards, distribution-specific documentation and performing mind-numbing tweaking at the four corners of the operating system?

Sure he will; just as soon as we can clone dinosaurs from the blood in the digestive track of prehistoric mosquitoes that were preserved in amber.

Look at the whole product...

[Badanov]

I have looked over many of the anti-open source remarks. Their arguments seem to say that proprietary software is better for the massive offerings they have in applications, all of them including browsing, mail, office, etc... And so they are. But even the most fanatical MS groupie has got to admit that the Linux desktop and many of the applications are stable and usable enough for the mainstream; they are not very well marketed, mostly becuase that was never the point for Linux.

Many of the open source arguments fail to mention, from what I have seen, is that every Rehat Linux distro comes with no fewer than two programming languages, and if you want it all, there are many many other languages which come with a typical Linux distro, MS would be loathe to load upon thier own OS distro.

Those languages are already there ready to rock and roll, for those who want to fully customize their computer using shells sripts and the like; and I am talking only about bash commands and perl, not some of the other languages such as gawk and the like. Of course many like me have seen their fair share of glazed over eyes when you look into those eyes to tell them these as reasons for using Linux.

These are fantastic, wonderfully flexible mechanisms for people to make their computers do what they want when they want in the manner they desire, in a secure and stable manner. Last time I looked, I had to rely on MS's thinking on the subject, which is basically, we know better than you and what works well for you, so no perl for you.

Now, I will grant you not every human being on the face of the earth would like to learn programming, and I believe that a simpler Redhat distro targeted towards those who want an inexpensive OS so they can do internet stuff would probably be a better in for the Linux community to expand Linux for the average user.

So I guess the answer would be, Linux will probably not become mainstream for the average computer user. MS with their Xbox and this coming concept of a universal household computer appliance (all running MS products exclusively of course) will see to that soon enough. But Linux's existance has been demonstrated not to be tied to MS's concept of what computing will be, but rather what it should be: the freedom and the absolute right to tell your CPU which code to run and under which language.

I happen to be the tech person at my family's company and I am sold on Linux and open source solutions to business matters, and am moving our business computing towards Linux and away from MS for our basic tasks.

I guess I have rambled on about all this. But every chance I get I try to get people to try Linux, frustratingly to little avail, not, albeit, owing to the quality of Linux product, but to the deviously simplicity of MS products.

Jeez, probably shoulda shut up. Oh well...

Re:It IS mainstream already

[Wakko Warner]

Why do you assume that someone who runs a Microsoft product instead of the corresponding Open Source analog is underqualified? Setting up Apache is by no means a measure of one's sysadmin prowess. You could train a retarded monkey to do it.

- A.P.