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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?
Most of the net and probably most corporate and military servers runs apache and sendmail on GNU/Linux/BSD...
It sounds like this guy is talking about end-user applications that would be used by "normal people".
How many open source success stories are there, where the open-source solution is so clearly superior that it's used by everyone? Uh, zero.
Well, how about open source application that are good enough to compete with proprietary software? Uh, one. Mozilla, perhaps.
How many are "up-and-comers" that just need good word-of-mouth to take over from a proprietary solution? Uh, zero. (IE is already free-money)
The only one that I can think of MAYBE for the latter category is Gimp, and the user interface on that thing is so horrible as to be useless for anyone but a true geek (at least, the last time I used it which was admittedly a while ago).
Bottom line, I don't think proprietary software has much to worry about at this point.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Or does the question refer to just client software only? I think that in time, Open Office and Mozilla will gain more converts, as will Linux itself. The only thing the above two lack in my opinion is exposure, not features in their respective interfaces. Exposure without a marketing campaign takes time.
Open Source software is already mainstream both for regular users (look at Apple's OS X) and developers (look at all the work IBM's been doing in this area). What else is there to be done before it is considered mainstream? Grandma submitting a kernel patch by sending in a diff? W
1) Mainstream = "The biggest/largest/greatest".. then probably no
2) Mainstream = "Widely accepted and used amongst normal people" then yes.. this is today.
Look at companies like IBM and Dell.. would you call them mainstream ?.. most likely.. So if they offer PDAs/Servers/Workstations with Linux or any other OSS product on.. then it is mainstream already.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
First off, the motivation of a an open source developer tends to differ from that of a closed source developer. The closed-source developer is doing it at least partially for the money, so they have a great incentive to make it easy for customers to use. An open source developer generally creates software for some other reason. It is not that an open source developer wants to make things hard for people to use it, but since it isn't a goal it tends to be overlooked.
My understanding of the general flow of open source projects is that somebody writes some code for their own needs. They think it is cool, so they show it to some of their friends who may also be developers. The friends have some suggestions and pass it on to some of their friends. Soon you have a project written by developers for developers. If somebody else wants to use it, that's fine too.
Obviously, not every open source project starts this way, but the enduser generally isn't the first consideration.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
Open source -- as we know it today, has so many things wrong with it I can't even begin to tell you..
:) (yes, those things cost money -- sometimes money needs to be spent).
1> Documentation is usually 2nd priority. In my world, if there's no documentation, there's no product.
2> The product is usually 2nd rate. Because there's often no money on the line, my experience has been that the programmers take less accountability for their efforts. Big bug? Guess you have to wait until the programmer (or someone else) gets around to it. Big bug in a program you paid thousands of dollars for? My experience is that enough screaming can get you a patch in very little time.
3> The user interace is lacking severely. Bigger companies hire people who specialize in usability to the design the UI. Open-source projects have HORRID user interfaces (A perfect example of this would be Request Tracker -- the software rocks.. the documentation sucks, and the awkward user interface effectively makes the product useless for large-scale deployments).
Open-source definitely has it's place. It's fabulous for the "quick fix it" jobs and the "I've got lots of time on my hands to figure it out and fix any problems I find" solutions. Sadly, however, my experience has been that this stuff is only truely free if your time is worthless.
Don't get me wrong.. I love open-source software. I wouldn't be able to do my job without it -- but with these drawbacks, it will never take the place of the mission-critical elements where I can hold someone responsible with I don't get what I need.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
If you want to see mainstream adoption of open source, you have to look outside of the USA. If you follow the Linux news sites you'll see lots of foreign organizations, particularly governments, looking to make big switchovers to Linux and other open source software. Bill and Steve have been doing a lot of travelling lately, offering what basically amounts to bribes to keep these organizations on Windows.
So yes, the world has already started the mainstream move to open source, but the United States is the last place you'll see this effect -- because we're too heavily entrenched in Microsoft crap to be among the first.
This parallels other technology shifts. Why do other nations have wireless networks that are so much better than those found in the USA? Because they didn't become heavily entrenched in landlines the way the USA did, so they were able to leapfrog. It's the same way with software: fewer installations of Microsoft crap mean an easier deployment of something else.
Just give it time. Basic economics will work it out.
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My Answer: It's their prerogative. I use open source software because I like the philosophy, and I am computer literate enough to handle its inherent insanity, but I also know people that like the philosphy behind the free software movement, yet don't want to use it because it sucks(i.e. isn't as easy to use).
does this bother me? Yeh it kind of does, but I understand the rationale behind my choices, and I also understand the rationale behind theirs. Since this is all about freedom (isn't it?) shouldn't the developers also choose what they want to focus on, as though they want to use their code themselves? Damn straight they should.
I see the occasiaonal annoying post on here that goes along the lines of 'why don't we have a unified linux?', 'why don't we have easy to use this, or easy to use that?' The reason is simple. Freedom. If you want mainstream acceptance, go to a commercial software vendor and try to prvoide a product more people want to use, and use the money they pay you to make it better.
Open Source development is done on free time, except for the lucky few who are sponsored. That makes it a hobby and hobbies are for fun.
Dealing with non computer literate people is not fun; it is work. Given this contradiction I doubt that "pure" Open Source will ever become mainstream.
However, I can see the possiblity of the hybrid open source / commercial groups succeeding in that area. These organizations (such as SuSE) pay people to do the boring stuff like write documentation targeted at non-techies and so forth.
Mainstream :
: : :
Apache, Sendmail, Pine (used in almost every university of the country), GCC.
Potential Mainstream with primary need:
Mozilla - word of mouth and improvement in stability
Ximian Evolution - word of mouth and hands on use.
OpenOffice - word of mouth, universal office document format
Linux -
for the general internet browser
better GUI, fonts, documentation, games and more applications.
for the new power user
better GUI, fonts, documentation
for the professional
better documentation
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
While I'll admit that copying in X isn't exactly the most friendly thing, I found myself using Gnome and having the same kinds of complaints that I have using windows. Namely, there's a bunch of stuff that makes no sense to me as to why anyone would want things to be that way. I don't understand why windows is mainstream. I avoided it in college, and now that I use it more often at work, I bang my head on my desk in amazement at how difficult it is for MAINSTREAM users to use. Anytime I FIND a problem in windows, I can't ask anyone how to fix it, because most likely, they don't know. Why does Alt-F4 in Powerpoint XP close only 1 window, when ALT-F4 in any other office app closes all the windows? Why does hitting the OUTSIDE X in powerpoint XP close only 1 window? That's right, if you somehow ended up with 1000 powerpoint presentations opened, you would have to click 1000 times or hold down ALT-F4 until they all went away. Mainstream users seem to be able to put up with this sort of behavior though. And when I used gnome and saw how utterly similar it was in all the pain aspects of windows, I had the cynical thought, "Let 'em suffer with their easy-to-use interface."
Actually, it is a recipe for failure. There are very few smart people in this world. Popular software needs to be designed so that the average person doesn't find it too difficult to use. Alas, if you want to target smart people, you will end up writing great stuff, but wont have it used very often.
I'm the "lead" of a couple open source projects that will never be mainstream, for two reasons: (1) The products target application developers (not lay-men) and (2) I don't have time to donate for the sole purpose of helping "stupid" users.
While reason (1) kind of makes my posting a little off-topic, reason (2) I think is true of a lot of open source projects - including those for products that do not specifically target the tech-savvy.
The reason is that open source is nearly always built from "donated" time, and most of us coders just don't have enough time to spend on such low-priority (as we see it) things as making the product easy for "dummies" to use. Sometimes I struggle to even respond to mailing-list questions that are obviously written by "dumb people" - I just think "it's not worth my time"!
This attitude probably even affects open source projects that are actively trying to target the mainstream. I'd imagine for most developers it's a constant battle between their personal attitude/desires and the project goals.
I'd say Mozilla and Evolution are the two best examples of success in making open source software that is usable by the main-stream. Kudos to those developers!
Take suggestions from dumbasses?...Wow. There's a recipie for failure.
I have to think that it is not being suggested that software developers take design or implementation suggestions from dumbasses. That would be a bad idea. Instead, we are probably talking about listening to the dumbasses to find out what they want, then making that happen. That is a good idea. Give the dumbasses what they want, and they will use it. And keep in mind that just because a dumbass wants it doesn't mean it will be a bad product or inherently flawed in some way.
Linux will never live on everyones desktop. It will never be much more than a 'tolerable' desktop environment.
Now, with all the open-source hoobldy doo and work going into wine, samba, etc, why has noone started a project to copyleft *the* defacto desktop standard we all know and love, Windows.
I mean really, whats so taboo about starting with an open source kernel, binary compatible with the NT kernel, then a desktop manager and supporting apps, functionally compatible with Windows. Port all that wine nonsense over so you have compatible APIs to build from.
The drivers and hardware support is largely supplied by the hardware vendors anyways, so thats already done.
Add your own window manager, simmer and stir, and you've got yourself a compatable OS.
And no whining about how 'insecure' and 'crappy' it is - because OS developers wouldnt make mistakes, right?
Someone tell me why I'm wrong, and a reason other than the obvious: the OS community doesn't have the resources and skill set to do what Microsoft spent years and billions doing.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I wonder if you've ever worked at a major commercial software firm? You will find egos and back-stabbing tactics to make your head spin. IBM has so much management and so many turf wars, it's a wonder they get anything done at all.
There are groups within Microsoft that refuse to release source code to other groups in Microsoft even when those other groups can't figure out the API's without it! "It's our code and you would just fork it and mess it up!" Seriously.
Just because the OSS infighting is public doesn't make it unusual. It's mild compared to some of the in-house stuff I've seen.
Most Open Source software has historically had limited scope -- until the Web came along with all of the accompanying standards which anyone could right to. Oh, and a little known OS called Linux came along.
My view is that the problem hasn't been the overall software, it's the hardware and hardware interfaces.
Let's face it: no matter how sophisticated a user might be, if they don't want to configure my own machine, but I do want to use things like:
- State of the art Graphics Cards,
- scanners and digital cameras,
- MIDI interfaced keyboards, etc.
- Sound Cards,
- DVD players,
- most inkjet or laser printers, etc.
and have them work somewhat seemlessly out of the box(es) then I am pretty much stuck with the first ubiquotous / mainstream GUI OS's, AKA Windows or Macintosh.Most of the knowledgable people I have talked to agreed that the thing that killed OS-2 in the short term was lack of good hardware drivers, not the lack of a killer application. Couple that with the lack of inexpensive, commonly available programming tools (IIRC IBM's Visual Age compilers were close to $1000 at tha time) meant that sophisticated but self-funded programmers (like yours truly) gave up trying to do any decent development work on anything but WinXX machines.
Linux changes all that because the tools are there or coming, many hardware drivers are also coming along (Open Sourced as well), and there are even Linux BIOS initiatives coming out. So I expect that within a similar period of time (5 years (?)) Open Source will have a much stronger market presence than it does now -- unless the US Gov't + big business (AKA MPAA, RIAA, and M$) manage to kill the whole movement dead for the average American consumer.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Doesn't the Tivo interface indicate that open source in general and Linux in particular is not just ready for the mainstream, but already in use by the mainstream?
Or are you talking about GUI's? The Tivo gui is proprietary, as is the Apple GUI (another example of an opensource project out in the mainstream).
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Just most isn't. A good example is something like CDex. It's a small open source free software project that is relatively mainstream. The reason it is so successful is because it serves a useful function, is for windows, is easy to use and easy to install. It is also one of, if not the, best CD audio ripping program there is.
The reason that OSS isn't mainstream is because most of it is for linux, most of it is hard to use, and most of it is hard to install. Most of these have to do with the nature of being for linux.
Stuff like Mozilla, gAIM, CDex, etc. can become mainstream. But Open Source programmers make things for themselves, and generally don't have the public in mind. Companies that make commercial software have a primary concern of profit. They will only profit if their software can actually be used by lots of people. OSS programmers don't have this as their primary concern. When they do their software will become mainstream.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
As someone who's written several free applications that "compete" with commercial apps, I can say with authority that I'm not interested in bringing down the commercial vendors. In each case I saw a problem that wasn't being addressed the way I wanted, solved it for myself, and if anyone else wants to use my solution, they're welcome to it. If they want to use one of the commercial alternatives, they're welcome to that too. Makes no difference to me. The question, "How can I make my package so attractive that other people will choose it instead of the competition?" has nothing to do with why I develop open-source software.
Some might say, "Well, yeah, and that's the problem with open source. You'll never appeal to a mass audience that way." Which to me is like walking up to a lion tamer and telling him he's never going to grow any oranges holding the chair like that. A statement which is both perfectly true and utterly beside the point.
Unless it's made illegal, I'll keep writing software and keep releasing the source code no matter what the rest of the world thinks of the concept of free software. I'm not doing it for them.
While it's true that Libre Software developers work more closely with the users who contribute back to the project in some way, and those users tend to be the smarter, geekier users, the biggest difference between free and proprietary software is that free software encourages users to become smarter.
/. is not the forum for full-blown research papers as comments, so I won't defend my thesis further.
The value in learning the nitty-gritty details of a proprietary product are lost when the vendor makes incompatible changes to scare off potential competition. The proprietary vendor wants no help from the users. He wants his users to send him money on a regular basis and not ask questions unless they will pay for answers.
The Libre developer doesn't give a rats ass what the user does with her software. That's what makes the software free. The developer prefers to get something back for her effort, so she has a motive to make her software approachable and to provide her users with means to contribute back to the project, and often that means encouraging the user to get smarter, directly or indirectly.
This is a gross over-generalization, but
I'm sure you were thinking bigger than this, but just about everyone who owns an Archos MP3 player and who has tried the Rockbox OS has switched to it.
5 9&mode=thread&tid=100
Slashdot covered is a while ago: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/04/00182
The Rockbox OS replaces the standard OS on the MP3 player. It's completely open source, and yes it's completely legal, too.
Version 1.4 is out now. Except for recording functions that are due in the next version (and may already work in the daily builds) and a few file functions, Rockbox does everything the shipped OS does, and does it better, and does alot more. Rockbox supports threading, where the Archos OS freezes to think all the time. Rockbox supports text files and new fonts and many languages. Archos OS supports 1 font and 1 language and no text files. Rockbox also allows one to customize the while-playing screen to display any and all info about the song. Rockbox is also much better at handling play lists and randomizing them. The one time I tried to make a playlist with the Archos OS my MP3 player froze for over an hour.
Certainly, if all the people who were pirating actually had to pay for Photoshop, they'd probably consider Gimp instead. Some might still have found they need it, but most would settle for something free, or something cheaper. Unless you have ethical or juridical (think:companies) concerns with not having a legal licence, Photoshop is, and presumably will be superior to Gimp for a long time.
"Free" copies of Windows, MS Office etc. is what is keeping free software from the markedplace. And I think Microsoft knows this. Noone is going to feel that they've "hurt" Microsoft by not adding another 0,000000001% to their bank account. I don't think there's much software that a majority needs and would be willing to pay for. 50%+ don't need Photoshop. But if they can have it anyway, why not. It's like having an off-roader without ever going off-road. It's not that you actually do it, but that you could do so.
I know. At a work place I had to make do with Paint to make some simple figures, because there was no budget to get me anything better. Ok it was simple lineart, but still... I'd want nothing more than to install Photoshop/PSP/whatever, but I couldn't.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
in the same vien, those things that seem "sophisticated" now will be much less so in the near future. Already this is the case, as with no matter what OS you're using there are tools that do steps for you. Things are automatic nowadays, as well they should be. Just as we are no longer sitting in front of our cars and turning a crank to start the engine anymore, and just as more and more cars not only have "automatic" gear ratio adjustments depending on their speed, computers are more automated. For years now it has been assumed that new devices will be detectable, will auto-configure themselves, etc., when installed. Its fairly simple to wrap a program and cause cores to be sent to developers. Eventually, the understanding of the underpinnings of something will be solely the job of the engineers and such - your common admin won't need to even really exist generally, much less know anything about the OSI model, or whatever else.
these aren't random prophecies of a lunatic, they're observations of the obvious progression that's taken place. Its the way humans work. We no longer want to hit two rocks together and blow on some grass - we want to be able to enter the room and the fireplace automatically starts. We want our homes to start adjusting to the temp we desire 30 minutes before we get home. We want the lights to come on when we come in the room. We want things to cook themselves. We want these things, and more and more, we expect them. Who of the readership has a washboard? Yet we don't even think of a laundry machine being "automatic" anymore, as its just an expected function. Many of us wonder why the laundry machine can't determine what kind of clothes we put in, adjust settings themselves as needed, and then dry the clothes without needing a human to move things from one machine to another. We expect that. We wonder why it isn't here yet. That's the way we are.
So...what about open source? It appeals to engineers (you know, the only ones that really need to know what's going on). Not only that, but it appeals to those performing the actual pushing for innovation - the hardware designers and the distributors. As was covered in the recent /. article about the cellphone and PC worlds colliding, companies like having the software right before them, with nothing hidden. Having a company like MS around to dictate to them how and when yo use their product, and to whom to sell it to, REALLY gets under the skin of hardware design and distribution companies. It still seems to many a silly notion that software should be pushing the hardware around. The hardware is the key. Software is just the interface.
"so does open source have a future?" Of course it does. That's a dumb question, really. "Can it become mainstream?" Why not. Are we so short sighted that we can't tell that all this industry is doing is the same thing every other industry has ever done throughout the history of man? Isn't "open source" afterall the ideal of simply letting your research and work be usable by everyone? The discoverer of fire neither kept that discovery to himself forever, nor could he have. the computer industry has simply moved slowly in its maturation in relation to the extreme speed of its expansion, and is just now starting to deal with issues that are normally handled in more formative stages. Information refuses to be kept secret.
Go to NCBI's website some time and you'll get an idea about how much info is shared. Those who are sharing info excel, those who don't flounder. MS is just the product of an immature industry. Yes, the ideal of freely available information will prevail. It is part of our nature to want to learn, and to teach - they're base social instincts. Sharing therefore logically follows.
If you could buy something in a Texas Wal-Mart a couple of years ago, would you say it deserves the name "mainstream"?
:)
If yes, then it's too late for Linux to escape, because I've done that.
Nicely boxed, manual-included Linux distros have been around for years (in national chain stores), and "open source" covers things a lot less radical, like say the Phoenix browser. Lots of Windows users don't think of themselves as too far from the mainstream justs because they're using a better browser than IE
tiothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
What's wrong with software for "sophisticated users?"
Nothing.
Somewhere, pundits have declared that Open Source and Free Software must appeal to the masses in order to be a "success."
If anything, the desire to attract the masses is a primary reason why commercial software stinks. It's bloated, complex, and wasteful -- because it tries to be everything to everyone.
Open/Free Software, on the other hand, lacks the financial incentive that dilutes creativity and effectiveness in commercial products. "Free" has many connotations, including the freedom to be original and precise.
Open/Free software can not be treated as a monolithic block; "popularity" means very different things to developers of various projects. Where KDE and Gnome care deeply about being popular, many (many) other projects do not.
Freedom is about choice -- some projects chose to chase popularity, while others focus on being the best available tool for a discerning audience. Trying to declare a goal of "popularity" for all Open/Free software is myopic at best and counter-productive at worst.
All about me
Microsoft has done what they had to do to penetrate an uneducated market for their products. Open source has the luxury of listening to the power users for the simple reason that as more children grow up with everyday computing from an early age, this demand will increase dramatically. Bottom line, people that are over the age of 25 today, and this becomes more pronounced as you get to the age of 35 are either barely machine literate, or at worst do not know how to operate a mouse. It has become eerily similar to simple reading literacy rates, 30-50 years ago in this country. We take for granted the high literacy rate in the US because it has been a mainstay of our society for so long. In another 20 years, computer literacy will be the same way. Go ahead, ask any 18 year old today what life was like before the internet. Unless they grew up in the bottom 5% of the socio-economic spectrum, you'll hear quite a bit of, I don't know. The balances are just begining to tip. This is not to say that Open Source today is user friendly, but to say that computer users will only become more sophisticated as they start earlier.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
..way back in the olden daze, you used to be able to buy 'a car'. cars where large and weird looking, had personalities of a sort, but were 'square". people wanted pizazz, they wanted "more",including more power.
Enter the geeks.
Car geeks chopped channelled and lowered cars, made them high compression and short stroke, tweaked this, tweaked that, result-hotrods.
Flash forward a coupla decades, "hotrods" become factory built, you could literally walk into the dealer and drive out with 400+ HP "hotrods".
Did detroit do this on their lonesome? Did some marketing guy thunk this up all by himself? Nope, it took millions of young car geeks simply doing it to the consternation of staid marketing, eventually-and I mean eventually-they bingoed to the phenomena. They were partly driven by-surprise-the car geeks-the kids in a lot of cases- turning into the engineers at the plants, working on the assembly line and talking cars on break, at the dirt tracks all over, this drove the industry in a direction it didn't want to go at first, they were square and wanted to stick with the gold old tried and true bloatware boats, but eventually the sheer mass and enthusiasm of cars as cool and powerful enablers of humans took hold and the main stream acceptance of "hotrods" became as much a norm as anything else.
Computers aren't any different. Young people today who are the hotrodders-the tinkerers, the geeks, will be driving this industry. We ARE at exactly that point now near as I can tell. It's not going to be anything else BUT the enthusiasts because they are the ones going into the hotrod computer industry. The masses who just play games occassionally and do email and work as drones in some office and don't even 'get it" with computers are just along for the ride, and that's it, evne the 'bosses' now who don't get it will be forced into it as all their people below them startytelling them the same thing over and over again. The establishment controls the now but aren't the ones who will drive what is accepted, because they lack the enthusiasm.
People with enthusiasm make the new software, overclock the hardware, design the custom cases, think up new ways to "do things", and as such will automagically become "the industry".Money will get there somehow, one little company at a time, one new box that is tried as an "experiment" at bigco to shut up the young sysadmin, one piece of open source adopted over closed, it'll just happen.
They get jobs, they are given tasks, the way their brains work they will always migrate to what they are the most enthusiastic about, DESPITE being ordered otherwise to remain square and "normal". They are fanatics, and will have their way, it's just human nature.
To use a very old expression that fits, it's not the dog in the fight, it's the fight in the dog.
So to answer you, yes, the enthusiasm for open source is a factor of ten or one hundred times the level of the enthusiasm of the borg or closed source. They will win then, it's just common sense and a logical conclusion. You might argue about the timing, that's about it. I am guessing we are almost exactly at the tip over point. Most industry "experts" are saying closed source and the borg OS will dominate for years and years and years. I disagree. I disagree a lot.
Remember, the same exact guys said that about the dotcom stock market boom as well. Open source has gone right through the dotcom boom and while all sorts of other things techish evaporated, it just kept on cruising, didn't it?
Look at the enthusiasm of users, not from any paid industry experts as to trends. Experts get paid to parrot already established market forces, the term "shill" is over used, but the basic idea is still correct. Look around corporations in the trenches, where is the enthusiasm at? The young folks entering the workforce now grew up with computers, they didn't learn them as adults. It's not a chore to them it's not hard drudgery. Those people are open source enthusiasts by and large, mostly all do things like file sharing and mods, they code for fun as well as money, they really push envelopes. And they are overwhelmingly adopting open source, so...there ya go.
Why does it matter if it ever becomes your definition of mainstream. It works fine for those that are using it, mainly because they activley looked for a solution to their problem instead of throwing money at a problem in hopes of solving it.
As far as the argument of it being worth your time if your time is worthless, I feel pity for those that jump on that bandwagon. If your life is run by such perceptions, it will be a dull and plain white-picket-fence kind of life. Although Im sure you will have plenty of money.
Im a member of this community, and frankly I dont think its any concern of mine how many people share my outlook. After all, I dont judge my lifestyle by the number of people similar to me, in other words it doesnt get validated simply because its 'mainstream'. If an individual decides to be part of an open source community thats fine, its also fine if they continue to be impressed by paying hundreds of dollars for a 'new' OS that is nothing more than new eye-candy.
It never ceases to amaze me that there are those out there who cloak their true intentions when asking questions like these posted on slashdot. Basically all thats being done is trying to find the 'popular' side to jump on. The world would be such a better place if people just gravitated to areas they wanted to make a difference in, instead of taking a poll to decide, your life isnt a political campaign!
It would be nice if moderators could moderate the root story, like a hall-of-fame for articles with the most positively moderated one at number 1. Im going to assume most of these ask-slashdot articles would be filling up all the rankings at the bottom.
Education is universally underfunded, and is such a massive activity that it is hard to see how that will ever cease to be true. While there is some market to rich-country middle-class parents, schools in most of the world (including much of the USA) will seldom be able to either pay commercial-software prices or, due to their public nature, to use pirated software. And the difference between cheap and free is essential, since free software can be used at the initiative of a teacher without the paralysis of going through a management approval and purchasing process.
This has been rather slow to take off, although there are a lot of very good educational web sites, but it will build dramatically once the OSS installation process has been smoothed out by the government OSS adoptions that are beginning to appear. Educational software is particularly likely to be able to attract sponsored development. It will also need a lot of localization and customization to match textbooks, etc. Many of the educational websites will be able to move easily into applications.
We can already see that corporations will make a strong attempt to co-opt this sector by strings-attached "contributions" that channel students their way, and this may have some impact in the short term. But they can't afford to buy off the entire billion students.
Thanks to SUN which initiated a Gnome usability study; there are now explicit usability projects http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/ for Gnome and http://usability.kde.org for KDE. I feel that Gnome and KDE developpers have began paying attention to what heir usability contributors are saying, and there have been some (albeit) small steps in the right direction. But things will sure need some time to happen as is the always the case with open source. Open source need time. I am using Mozilla 1.2 right now, and it realy rocks ! IE 6.0 has been really left far behind ! in my opinion
- Your average human being:
- Knowledgeable folk:
I, for one, am perfectly content with the current state of affairs; the former community can stick to its foolish and lemming-like ways, while the latter and more important will continue to use OSS, which is already mainstream to them.These people, originally feerful of computers and other things associated with magic, have been succored into buying and using computers because of flashy and glittering promises made to them either by corporations through advertising or from boastful or misunderstood friends/family members. They have very little patience; they want computers to do what they want, and they want it done immediately. A good many of them have given into the superstition that computers are some sort of life form capable of making deicisions and doing work for them, often becoming extremely hostile and bitter when the opposite becomes obvious, though they continue to deny the fact. These people, however, are not picky, and are willing to accept quick-fix solutions and botch jobs which would have otherwise been found unacceptable if they had actually done the work. Therefore, they flock to software that is easy to use and that gets something done (though what, they care little) regardless of reliability or effectivity. Therefore, this "mainstream population", flocks to over-priced software, often convinced that you get what you pay for (an example of faulty logic, their favorite kind); they are not concerned with open source software, usually either not knowing what it is or already having been convinced by their "friends" that it's somehow unhealthy.
These people range from hobbyists to professionals, generally having a good understanding of the form and function of computers. They buy computers with precise knowledge (usually) of what it is they want their computers to do for them, and how they are going to get that done. This computing culture has a great deal of experience with open source software, which has always been present throughout its development with good consistency. It's perfectly acceptable not to use open source all the time, and many might prefer commercial products of particular virtue, though most probably favor some open source programs to others. Only a small portion of these people are open source fanatics, the rest simply using open source software because it is particularly useful for their purpose. Needless to say, a great deal of open source software is considered mainstream among this group.
Throw rocks at MS and the other closed source companies all you want (and they definitely deserve it, as we all know), but the bottom line is that when your weekly paycheck depends on getting mainstreamers to pay good money for your software you have a very different view of the world than when you're listening to the geek crowd and pleasing just your peer group.
We all know the reasons why Linux won't ever make it on the mainstream desktop--crappy docs, too much required tinkering, spotty hardware support, and not enough compatibility with the programs those would-be customers really want to run. There's one more reason, one that the /. crowd is loathe to admit: Windows has finally become a really decent OS. Sure, it took them way, way too long to get there, and it's still far from perfect, particularly on the security and privacy fronts, but WinXP is solid and highly usable.
There was a time when it was a race: Could Linux (already highly stable) become usable before Windows (acceptably usable) became stable? The race is nearly over, and Windows has such a huge lead that it will take a techno-miracle for Linux to catch up.
I think the open source model, at least its most popular implementation, has proven that it can write great software but is unable to make it 'mainstream.' This is understandable if you take a look at the number of great programmers working on open source and compare that to the number of graphic and UI designers as well as product managers. Yes, every project needs good management and not every programmer is a good manager or designer. A manager must decide what features are needed, how to make the user's experience consistent, and how to unify the goals of the project. Often this isn't done in open source programming and you end up with overlapping, hard-to-use features and multiple ways to accomplish the same task. Some would call this power, I call it confusion.
I'm assuming that by mainstream you mostly mean it has a good UI. They've made great strides but I think the problem is one of control. Even a large distributor like Red Hat doesn't have much control over the contents of the individual packages. They just don't have the manpower and the business model to allow them to customize every software package to fit in with their vision of the end-user experience. So you end up with a distro that ships with 5 or so shells, 2 good window managers with completely different interfaces, and thousands of free applications each with their own quirks, UI, and configuration file. Folks, this is not mainstream. It's not the fault of the developers, it's a problem inherent in the open source model.
Now switch gears.. if our word 'mainstream' means widely used, well it already is. Look no further than Apache/PHP. Also tons of mainstream, non-free software includes free components such as OpenSSL. There are also individual packages that I would consider mainstream such as VirtualDub. Maybe Grandma isn't going to use it, but VirtualDub is widely accepted as a great package for video processing.
Open-source will eventually become mainstream. Here's why:
(1)
Open-source is needed for Large-Scale Distributed Development ("LSDD", I'll call it). LSDD is the only methodology that can handle the enormous demands and expectations that are being made on software.
For example, look at Windows security. Microsoft is having a very difficult time finding and fixing their never-ending stream of security bugs. They're severely handicapped because their policy prohibits opening their source-code to LSDD, which puts a maximum cap on the resources they can employ to fix their security problems.
Over the long run, Microsoft will be out-performed by open-source, due to the overwhelming advantage in LSDD resources. (Some say this has already happened.) The passage of time will exaggerate this performance gap, until eventually it becomes clear to all that open-source is the superior product.
(2)
There is a growing realization that open-source is the licensing method of choice -- particularly for government and education. Look for this trend to accelerate, as buyers educate themselves on all the issues, including TCO, single-source risk, security/privacy risk, and legal risk.
(3)
A significant new open-source trend has recently emerged: big-company muscle. For example, when IBM applies their marketing power to Linux, it lends a powerful air of credibility to open-source. The slogan "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" can now be updated to say "Nobody ever got fired for buying Linux". This development (and others like it) is ushering in the cultural changes that are needed for open-source to become mainstream.
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All three pieces are now in place for open-source to prevail: technical (1), financial (2) and cultural (3).
Every time this discussion comes up, the presumption appears to be that free software lacks mainstream appeal because of interface issues. While such considerations play a role, de-facto standard proprietary data formats and communications protocols play a far greater role in establishing the entrenched 'mainstream' computer interface with which people are familiar. Unless and until people wean themselves from their dependance on .doc, .xls, SMB, .NET, .mov, .wma, etc. they will find themselves locked into the familiar "mainstream" operating systems and applications. That is the crux of the matter, not pretty buttons and widget layout. With the MS anti-trust farce behind them, and palladium ahead of them, expect no mercy on the proprietary format front. Free software has a very tough row to hoe. Which is why free software's ultimate victory will be so much the sweeter...
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Aside from usability, documentation, etc., there are a few other things holding OSS back:
Marketing - Comercial software holds a big disadvantage here. Word of mouth doesn't spread very quickly from geeks to non-geeks. Most mainstream computer users haven't even heard of Mozilla, nevermind being willing to download, install and adjust to it. Even the tabbed browsing and popup blocking are not enough incentive for most people. IE came with their computer, it works, and all their friends use it.. why go through the bother of trying something else?
Shipping PCs with OSS - This could be shipping PCs with Linux, either dual-boot or standalone, but it could also start just by including Mozilla, GIMP, OpenOffice etc. on regular Windows PCs. Linux PCs at Wal-Mart is a start, but its got to go further: HP, Dell, etc., and people have to BUY them! One problem with OSS on boxed PCs is that its difficult to lure people to upgrade to commercial versions. You can't include a GIMP lite on PCs, with the hope that people will pay money to upgrade to GIMP gold.
Hardware support - I've been using Linux for years, and I don't enjoy having to do research before I buy a printer, digital camera, etc. to make sure it'll work with Linux. And if I can't get it to work, I'd like to be able to ask the manufacturer for support. The mainstream user wants to be able to plug something in, and maybe pop in a CD, click a couple buttons, and have it work. Sure.. sometimes everything goes fine in Linux, but its hit and miss.
And of course, there's the critical mass.. the more people that use OSS, the more people that WILL use it.
If by "mainstream" he means dominant and common, Uncle Sam gave us the answer, illegal monopoly. Yep, if free software came installed on PCs right out of the box and enjoyed it's obvious price advantage, it would be dominant by now. There's nothing more difficult about maintaining a Linux box than an M$ infected computer that the end of anti-competitive practices would not prevent. New M$ junk won't even run on some of my computers. As someone else pointed out Apple has taken Open software and sold and supported it without any technical problems. We can also point to the fact that there are just as many, if not more happy Linux users as there are happy Mac users.
It's happening anyway. Despite the best efforts of the "entertainment" industry to push DRM, people are turning from M$. They are willing to put up with the possible inability to listen to new music formats (WMA) and watch digital movies for the sake of ownership of their computers and their information. That is mainstream! Joe sixpacks is not going to go for the $1,000 stereo that breaks every two years that is WinXP. If that's all Joe is interested in, he may abandon computers alltogether for set top boxes. The rest of the computer using population will continue to move towards free software for it's superior tool sets. It's so simple even a dumbass like me can see it.
What kind of graduate student would be asking questions like this and holding forth such eleitist attitutdes? Let's look at the page. Hint one, name of course, " New Product Development." Product? Oh Lord! He's a Mechanical Engineer like me. Here's some help, Prabhu,
Good luck with your paper.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Why didn't you start a business supporting Postnuke for the government? You could have offered a training program, manuals, and support for the installation. Instead of offering to help them save a small licensing fee (note, $200k is the cost of two $60k/year employees for a year, not the small fortune you're making it out to be), why not offer them what they were looking for?
You could have bid at $100k/year + $25k/year support contract and $25k/year in training, saved them money, and started a small business. You had your first client.
Instead of complaining that they didn't want to save money, you'd have a business started. You could line up a few other government departments and been all set.
Nobody wants open source. People WANT solutions. Offer to sell them solutions + support. Don't talk about free, talk about "cheaper, more powerful."
Geeze, people willing to drop $200k on a solution aren't interested in "email some kid in Sweden for support and maybe he'll respond."
Alex