Slashdot Mirror
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.
Wow. There's a recipie for failure.
-Peter
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.
Thinking of writing a thesis on a technical topic? Why not post a question to Slashdot.org. In only a few hours, vast reams of research data can be obtained for even the most complex question.
And don't think that technical subjects are the only card up our sleeve. No! You can also try pseudo-science, advertising (blatant and subliminal), geek subjects (Trekkies & Star Wars), even religious wars (Trekkies vs Star Wars).
As an added bonus, try our Slashdot Effect (tm) server loading services at no extra cost!
Slashdot - serving all your information gathering and server loading needs. (See CmdrTaco for the latest rates)
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.
Is that an acceptible topic for thesis work these days - what's the future going to be like? How do you get reviewed on this: we'll let you know in a few years if your predictions pan out.
Maybe my science fiction novel will get me a masters in physics!!!
XML causes global warming.
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.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
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.
No, they will not become mainstream. They would, were it not for the fact that the law and the corporate media distributers and such are restricting many of the popular uses of an operating system and software. DRM and security protocols will continue to make matters worse. It would be like buying a toaster that you're not allowed to make toast with or that Wonder Bread designs their bread to go soggy in. It would make a good paperweight!
power geeks will write things for people like themselves. It only makes sense to invest your time into things that will either benefit you, or interest you.
When the mainstream writes thier own software (read, yea right) then they will write to the masses.
Maybe I'm closed minded, but I'm not holding my breath.
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.
"There also seems to be a lack of detailed documentation and an easy-to-use interface which normally attract the not-so-sophisticated users."
:)) and college and university students/grads -- who _must_ have studied user interfaces at some point!! (I hope -- I studied them in high school.) My point is, I think user-interfaces are have improved and are improving. The foundations of UNIX-like systems allow for modular additions (like X Window System) and take a look at the huuuge amount of work going into KDE and Gnome. Yes the command-line stuff is UNIX stuff - can't be avoided, but it can be _built upon_, and this is happening.
:)).
In regards to the user interface, I find _many_ (no, not all) open source contributors are computer programmers (duh
So I think this aspect of open-source is on the rise. I'm a Debian user, but I checked out Redhat Linux version 8 the other day, and wow! I don't run a desktop on my Debian machine (pwm baby!) but the Gnome desktop under Redhat is astonishing! It is a _USER_ desktop, WITHOUT all the Windows shit (you know what I'm talking about -- legacy support since 1982
I'd consider putting the new Redhat on my ma's machine and spending a few hours showing her the ropes. I have no doubt it'd go well (but don't challent me to it just yet -- I'm still finishing up my exams).
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."
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!
I believe it will be the companies which package the software and pretty-up the UI and features who will deliver it to the consumers (think IBM, RedHat, The Kompany, etc).
I think it's unrealistic to think that everyday computer users will become more computer savvy (why should they?). So don't expect to see grandma checking out freshmeat.net any time soon. But now that Walmart is selling Linux preinstalled on lost cost computers the doors for exposing non-technical people to open source are open.
The use of published, universally accessible standards are exactly what makes open technology flourish over proprietary systems. Think VHS vs. Betamax. Think Internet vs. Novell. Think 8086 vs. Macintosh. Free and open standards always beat proprietary technology.
"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?"
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Sex - Find It
infighting, bashing, selfish, attention-grabbing individuals
You've never worked on a large, *closed source*, commercial, proprietary software project before have you?
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!!!!
And the fundementals of the Internet are all open source.
Some that I can think of off the back of my hand:
bind, sendmail, telnet, ftp, ssh, apache, mozilla.
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.
There are alot of Gnutella opensource clients out there.
What about divx codecs? Im sure OGG Vorbis would also count, its in many video games now (wc3(divx)/serious sam/unreal2k3/etc)...
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...
I'd rather Linux not become too mainstream.
When it gets too mainstream, we'll get a lot (more) corporate involvement, and that is a major reason I left a certain OS behind years ago.
I'm guessing people are going to mention Nvidia and whatever those drivers are that came out the other day, but frankly I'm not impressed nor interested unless they are relased open souce. I know that idea isn't compatible with that industry, but, I won't be touching such things unless they are.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
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.
I doubt that Open Source anything will achieve consumer desktop conquest, due to the complexity. Note, too, the extreme disinterest afforded Open Source operating systems by all of the ISPs. Trying to get anything new to operate with Cox can be...interesting (finger on flamethrower twitches...). Inability to get TCP/IP packets into the home is problematic. Maybe Someone Might Say "Mighty Sweet M'f'n Situation". Monopoly, Someone? I'm openly curious as to the major shareholders in some of these ISPs. But I digress.
Embedded devices, maybe.
Server/networks/academically, there is a possibility.
My prediction is that both closed- and open-source exist in a mildly antagonistic coexistance (reminiscent of ma and pa Smith).
Now, if closed source has the effect of being a protectionist trade policy, and the rest of the world goes open, as India and China have recently made noises, is the US at risk of being beaten at its own technological game?
Who would be the un-American one in that situation, Mr. Ballmer?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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!
So what is preventing this from happening? Microsoft
- Microsoft has a monopoly in operating systems.
- Microsoft does not bundle any open source software with its OS (although it has plundered open source, returning nothing when the OSS license allows (BSD))
- Microsoft prevents large computer manufacturers from selling PCs with other OSes. (The "Microsoft Tax")
All that users get is a Windows computer with no source. Many users are content with this.Widespread open source adoption will depend on the efforts of distributors, such as RedHat, and the downfall of Microsoft as a monopoly. Open Source software will not stand on its own merits (although I believe that it could).
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.
Before I drone on about why open source software is the way it is; open source is mainstream just no one knows it.
How many people surf the web without querying a DNS server running Bind? How many send email and have that email get touched by a sendmail server or some other open source application? How many people visit web sites running Apache with PHP and MySQL or Postgresql?
People are using open source software every day and have no idea they are.
I hope open source software doesn't start pandering to the lowest common denominator with regards to the intelligence of it's users. That is the beauty of open source software, it's for people that want to do cool shit rather than do something easily. It's a question of power over ease of use. What is easier to use Notepad or Emacs? Notepad is much less sophisticated and much easier to use. Emacs is extremely powerful but requires a tremendous amount of affort from the user to learn all of it's features (and I still don't know half of it). Now granted Notepad wasn't designed to replace emacs, but I think my point is still valid.
What many people fail to recognize is that because open source is not Microsoft, it doesn't need to gauge it's success in the same way. A commercial software company has to sell a certain amount of software in order to have money to pay all of it's people, support the users and create a new version. Open source has none of these limitations. Open source software is successful when people use it and benefit from it. My open source project gets about 600 downloads a month, is it successful? I think so.
Everyone is always looking for some measuring stick to gauge the success of Open Source as if millions of people using it aren't enough. People talk about success meaning that your grandmother can use it. The open source community is selfserving; we make software that we want, not software your grandmother wants. We make software that is not that user-friendly but kicks ass if you take the time to learn it.
LoRider
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
And there it is. As someone who does not prefer any particular system or philosophy over any others, I can't believe how inexplicably high-and-mighty OSS pundits act around each other and the public at large. Not only is such bravado wildly unearned thus far, but is also hilarious to the outside world when coming from a group who "owns" less than 1% of the desktop market. You can trumpet all the server percentages you like, but the only people who care are the ones who already know.
As much as I have been (and will be again) shouted down for saying so, I know several people personally who have tried Linux or OSS, perhaps even liked it, but veered sharply away as soon as it came time to get help. Many of you people are just jerks and there is utterly no way to excuse a philosophy that seems to include ridicule as a way of attracting clients. The principle of having to deal with people like RMS and his followers, even if it means getting arguably equal software at zero cost, has itself cost OSS "clients" and probably does so every day.
A weak analogy may be the recently deceased XFL football league. Some of the modifications made really were pretty neat, but the overrall public dislike of Vince McMahon specifically and his loudmouthed sideshow mentality overshadowed the game itself. As a result, many passed judgement based upon the unlikeable central figurehead instead of the product itself. Similarly, I (and countless other non-political geeks) loathe Stallman and everything he touches and I, for one, admit that it colors my view of FS. I am not alone.
So, will OSS ever hit the mainstream? Maybe, but it's going to mean losing that enormous chip or at least the people who own the shoulders.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
Open source projects like Mozilla and OpenOffice, on the other hand have a friendly self-documenting 0-learning-curve interface; simultaneously they're the software items that open-source advocates tout will break the mainstream barrier.
What it comes down to is a matter of interface and documentation. From the user perspective, open source software has worked like this:
read manual -> practice -> read more -> use
Mainstream software works more like this:
try using -> use
Mainstream software is not something I'm going to have to study in order to use; rather it's something that I can learn by trying out.
Fortunately open source software is already becoming more intuitive. For example:
I use Red Hat 8. How do I...
Menu > Internet > Email
Menu > Internet > Web Browser
Menu > Internet > Instant Messenger
Menu > Graphics > Scanning
Menu > Office > Writer
Menu > Office > Diagrams
Menu > Preferences > Background
Anyway, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the open source paradigm; it's all a matter of choice of interface, and one can see already that in the newest distributions--like Red Hat 8.0--that the interface is becoming more acceptable for mainstream use.
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
People hate Microsoft
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. etc., etc. You're wrong.
Red Hat is one of the fastest growing companies in America
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Sorry to make you look so incredibly wrong, but you posted first. I just couldn't let that fly. By the way, what planet do you live on, exactly?
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
I mean, I'm using it on all but one of my servers.
I've used it for a local school district.
I've also used it for a local real estate company.
I'd say it's pretty mainstream.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
There are so many trolls on this thread I have to chime in.
There are a lot of brilliant researchers working on this very question. Rather than ask slashdot, perhaps we should look at the question in summary and hypothesize that that successful open source software seems to have a development dynamic -- distinct from that of most industrial software -- that allows some systems to grow at a super-linear rate for prolonged periods. We should all consider that this phenomenon worthy of additional investigation.
"If we knew what we were doing, we wouldn't call it research." -- Albert Einstein
Second : Open Source will prevail, in the end, in most staple applications. There is a need only for so many sorting algorithms, so many Operating Systems, so many spreadsheet programs. And if we have learned something is that when the software is good enough, people will stop worrying about getting it better. We are now in the early stages of that process. Don't get your panties all in a knot, paradigma shifts need time.
Third: Documentation will come, in due time, when software stabilizes. It's useless documenting a child, you are better off video taping the little beast. You document the adult, if it's interesting enough.
Fourth: Inertia will hold the present situation for long, but in the end, you can't fight the tide, except if you are Dutch, of course.
Five: Some things will never become Open Source, by their very nature. But they will be built on Open Source tools, most likely.
Those things I have been revealed. Now go.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I am a tech for an ISP and regularly use Linux and open source software on the server. I've been using it for years, some Debian at home, Slackware/RedHat at school, and more RedHat at work. Still, it seems there's always some irritating Linux zealot lecturing me on the differences between free and Free. Despite all the jokes I hear about Billy, which should be very obscure as to who I am talking about, it's assumed Bill Gates. Same thing with Redmond/Microsoft. If I am making jokes about Linux and mention Matt, what percentage of Slashdot people would know who I'm talking about? What percentage would give a damn? How many people would laugh at a Matthew Szulik joke if Leno told it?
Here's what I'm trying to say. I've seen star trek geeks (Matrix seems to be more common, actually) talking about Linux because they heard it was some geeky thing. They have no freaking clue when it comes to computers but use Linux 'cause it's cool with their geek friends. The Linux name is arguably on its way to becoming mainstream. But after all these years of using open source software I'm still not sure I have a firm grasp on "Open Source".
I'm going to have to disagree with your stance regarding documentation. If BSD's better documentation wasn't due to consistency then its longevity would actually work against it in regards to documentation. If it wasn't consistent then it would, rather obviously, be fragmented and disjointed and the amount of time it has been around would only magnify this fragmentation. The consistency is what has enabled BSD to maintain good documentation.
I can't really comment one way or the other on your stance on Microsoft-to-Linux Linux users.
*DISCLAIMER* I am not arguing about whether or not BSD has good documentation (or better documentation than Linux) only attempting to point out the logical fallacy in the parent post. Thanks.
Posting as directed.
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
OSS is unlikely to become mainstream because by its very nature there isn't going to be anyone who can spend the millions of dollars necessary to market a product well enough to make it widely used.
Having the better product has little to do with success. If noone is making big bucks from the software(and the average user is the worst type of user from a make-money-from-OSS point of view), then there isn't incentive for anyone to spend the big bucks to market it.
No marketing = no success.
You cannot get more mainstream than that.
Then theres mozilla.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Photoshop has the most easy to understand and consistant UIs i've ever seen! The gimp decides that people who want to edit / create iamges like a lot of dialog boxes and opening and closing windows, it's annoying as hell. Plus let's not forget that gimp really shouldn't be compared to photoshop as gimp is to photoshop as word pad is to MS word, and that's being convervative. Gimp hasn't even mastered the basic actions yet, let alone all the sugar that photoshop comes with. Plus, due to all the dialog boxes in the Gimp there is physically no way a trained gimp user could work faster than a trained photoshop user.
Photos.
Leaving out the fact that you can't get more mainstream than WalMart, where you can buy PCs run by Open Source, the final price barrier for the low-cost PC market is Microsoft Windows licensing fees. A white box mass market manufacturer who wants to sell a sub $200 PC has no options other than to run the box on Linux and bundle Open Office with it, MS is simply not available unless they want to give MS their entire profit margin.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The one thing about games is that people always seem to want something "new" - there are tons of old open-source games, most very playable, and for people who have tried them, huge time-wasters... which is probably why there's not that much effort to bring out new OS games :-)
Energy: time to change the picture.
..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.
who only got her first computer this year uses my Mandrake/KDE box right alongside her own Mac without any problems. In fact she prefers it because of the wide range of software freely available for her to use and she's asked me to build her one.
It's got all the pretty icons, buttons, clicky things the Mac does. They work just as well. They're just as "intuitive" to her and the Linux box actually crashes a bit less often than her Mac.
It lacks a bit of "fit and finish." Geeks seem to always leave off at the "rubbing out the finish endlessly" stage, but KDE has made particular strides along that line recently and don't look to be slowing down.
Open Source software is already perfectly acceptable to "Joe User." There's nothing "geekier" about Kword than there is about MS Word.
This is not the same thing as being accepted however. Although the press still seems to take cracks at the "geekiness" of OSS those cracks are almost always a couple years out of date and tends to harp on the CLI even though that's a none issue ( and the same press praises Apple for putting the command line back. Go figure). They effect the perceptions of said "Joe User" though.
Given time though I'll bet you anything that in the future the idea of a propriatary OS or WP will seem just plain doofey to the average Joe. Times change and perceptions change and OSS just keeps getting better and better without ever "forcing" expensive and pointless updates. Schools are starting to use it and as Apple proved getting it into the schools creates a user base. That's why Bill will send Steve to "Joe Blow Elementary School," or even go himself.
You never saw Jack Welch going there because they used Phillips lightbulbs instead of GE.
Here's a test you can do if you're so inclined. Take two Windows boxen and a KDE box and load up Word/Kword/OOWord in one of each. Take an average Joe and set them down to play with each. After he's played around for an hour or so ask him which one he wants, this one for $400 or one of the other two for free? Bet you the only functional difference he sees between the three is the price.
Ok, what's the catch with my mom? *I* installed the Linux. Not her.
But then she didn't install her Mac OS either.
KFG
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.
1) Better GUI tools. My drake distro is almost happy about this, but the help documentation is bloody atrocious. Howtos are almost useful, but require administrative knowledge on the most part. Not to say that I don't eventually want said knowledge, but that J. Random User won't want to have to wade through a big book on how to recompile your kernal.
2) A debian system with a Red Hat install. Honestly. The Red Hat installation was probably the easiest install I've seen. Only problem I had was it had dick-all for configuration tools, so I was up shit's creek when I got it all installed, everything worked happily, except I had no sound or ethernet. And it bugs me that rpms are such a nuisance. I really _REALLY_ want to see an apt-get in a system with as much ease of use as my 'drake box.
I think that's all that's really needed to turn Linux, and as such the entire open-source community, to a household name that every Joe User will be more than pleased to have on their computer, putting aside obvious market domination of Windows. But with WineX and OpenOffice, I honestly don't think that those are that far behind...
Karma: Non-Heinous
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
There also seems to be a lack of detailed documentation
That's it for me in a nutshell. Forget the "mainstream" -- the lack of good documentation renders a lot of otherwise nice software useless in the IT workplace.
Look at it this way: if you pay an admin $60/hr., every hour he or she spends struggling with your fragmentary docs or (much) worse, reading the source to figure out what's going on, reduces the cost-competitiveness of your software versus a commercial product by $60. In a big project, multiply that by the multiple admins and developers who have to struggle with it, and it's not long before your free-as-in-speech software is much more expensive than the free-in-no-way commercial alternative.
Forget the broader social issues, forget the long term. Management does not think that way, and they have compelling incentives not to. And most of all, forget the dollar cost of the software. Cost of software is almost always trivial compared to the cost of the labor required to maintain it, even with expensive packages like Oracle and (may god pity you if you have to deal with it) Interwoven. The real question from a "straight" business perspective is: how long will it take us to have Package X up and running smoothly? From a business perspective, that's the whole issue.
The idea that businessmen can be persuaded on a large scale to make decisions on something other than relatively short term ROI calculations is a fantasy. That's what federal regulation is for. If you want to move product -- and that includes free software -- you must understand your customers' needs and satisfy them better than the competition. Free software, by and large, does not do this.
"Intuitive" GUIs only become a major issue when you're talking about non-technical users -- not that it wouldn't be nice for plenty of server apps. When it comes to ordinary end-users, you can probably skip the docs because they won't read them. The GUI becomes absolutely critical then. Again, stop thinking about whether the end user can figure out the interface, or whether it's documented -- ask yourself, "Is my free package as easy to use as the competition's non-free package?" If your answer is no, go fix your interface problem.
Finally -- and slightly off-topic -- the notion that point-and-drool idiot-proof interfaces will cripple a program is nonsense. Sure, some things don't translate to GUIs well, but a lot of stuff will, and you can still provide a CLI/config file interface to the advanced users.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
- 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.
suitable only for sophisticated users
?
developers tend to listen only to their smartest customers
?!
What a load of ego bloat on this guy.
Some software requires a bit of technical abilities but not everyone would want to run it anyway. Developers, and I mean good ones, don't listen to anyone in the first place.
I think this predicting if something off sourceforge is going to be run by some grandma in Illinois is just navel gazing. I'm sure there are more useful thoughts to think.
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.
Yes. Since it is the smart ones who also make things easy to use and write documentation. Therefore, as long as the project includes people that are aware of making the software user friendly, it can become mainstream. Linux is heading toward that direction. Computers used to be mainstream only in government, then by hobbiests, then businesses, and now finally consumers. This is similar to Linux, except it never began with the government. It is only a matter of time.
Question everything.
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?
There's lots of public domain and BSD licensed software in Windows XP. Can't get more mainstream than that.
While there is no "one" reason why open source isn't the software of choice for Joe SixPack, I'd have to say that the lack of a marketing budget is a bigger one than people might think.
I recently gave a training seminar with a group of about 50 people who had very little computer experience. For licensing reasons, and because these people were to be sent overseas to teach computers to others, we decided to go with OpenOffice.org as the office suite to teach to people. (We also gave them a CD with that and some other free software with them that they could give to people overseas.)
The end result? Several were surprised at how easy it was, and amazed that such a thing was free. It has some quirks still, but overall it is a pretty good replacement for Microsoft Office. But the key was that *no one knew about it* before the training. Geeks seek this stuff out, but the average user doesn't know about the alternatives until they are told about them.
In the end, magazines and popular computer information sources are where these programs have the potential to get a wider user base, but they tend to be funded by commercial software vendors. To heavily promote OpenOffice.org may be to alienate Microsoft, and it's big advertising dollars. Word is slowly spreading, and I think over the next few years, you will see increasing awareness and adoption of open source, but right now it doesn't have the marketing muscle behind it to cause a rapid increase in adoption.
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...
Dawn of the Dead
Tone down the hobbyist bent of Linux
Uhh, the fact that Linux started as a hobby and still exists as a hobby has perhaps escaped you? That some opportunists would like to turn it into something more does not change the fact the Linux is and always will be a "hobby" at heart.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
I guarantee there will be a high profile court caser involving freenet within the next 5 years.
It is the only totally anonymous forum anywhere, and as such is a very dangerous thing. There will be no commercial takers to the thrown -- there's no money in really slow encrypted uncontrollable networks. But it will become popular with some nut group, or some politician will try to ban it, and it will become very high profile.
And just think...if you stick a copy on your DSL enabled computer, and donate 10 gig or so, you can get in on the ground floor of this exciting future controversy. They may even sieze your computer.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Everyone is missing the single biggest and most obvious reason that Open Source projects don't generally reach the masses. There is no marketing!!! The masses don't buy what's best. And they don't even manage to buy what they need most of the time. They buy whatever the flashy ads tell them to buy. They buy whatever the retail tie-in's dump right in front of their face when they walk in the store. They buy whatever the commissioned salesperson tells them they need to buy. And that's why Open Source solutions don't hit the big time. Nobody is spending millions (or billions in the case of some large commercial software vendors) to put Open Source solutions in front of the masses. Ever seen an ad for RedHat on network TV? Didn't think so. Do I even need to ask if you saw an XP ad during it's launch? Didn't think so.
I know lots of people who use Mozilla or Netscape.
Mozilla is 100% open source, and Netscape is close.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
In my experience Man pages have been much much much better than windows help. I mean, when was the last time you heard of someone using windows help, and it actually helping them?? Besides, there's a host of Books out there, and they generally update them for every distro.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
About 500.000 users simultaneously only on average.
I am a senior indie contractor working for NASA. I just saved 5% of my project budget for this year by using Open Source vs. Micro$oft. Since the division of NASA I do work for is roughly 1/2 PC, 1/2 Mac (OS X), Open Source (well, ok, + Java) was the *only* feasible solution.
So is 5% significant enough? It was for my company -- which runs as a shoestring outfit, and which NASA has repeatedly awarded (and rewarded) for giving good value for the buck.
Open Source has been saving my various employers (AOL, Siemens, Motorola, NASA) big bucks since the early nineties (back then we got a contract to do AIX + Sun work for Motorola, and lacking the funds to buy AIX & Sun boxen, we used Slackware 2.2 (yay Slack) for development, and recompiled (flawlessly) for AIX + Sun.
Obviously, I owe much of my entire 17 year career in software to Open Source and plan to dedicate the rest of it to bringing Open Source to NASA. Bottom line: every dollar NASA spends on proprietary software is IMHO mostly wasted, whereas every dollar NASA spends on me working with Open Source projects benefits NASA, me, and Open Source. Is it an uphill battle? Yes! Many of the Young Turks I work with (believe it or not!) are MS-only and do not use Open Source. But Open Source has benefitted my career so much, I owe it to Open Source to repay the favor.
FYI: Open Source packages used in the current project: Red Hat, Cygwin, Perl, PHP, Apache, Tomcat, OpenSSH, vi (yay vi), and all those other GNU/Linux utils.
What I'm seeing now is that more and more offices are converting to Linux for servers especially for file sharing, printing and emails. What's really surprising though is that interest is also picking up on OpenOffice. We're getting more and more calls daily from companies looking for OpenOffice training for their staff.
I guess that covers business mainstream. As for consumer mainstream, it's not quite there yet. RH8 is coming close, but I'm still having problems with a lot of consumer devices. People don't usually buy on features not by OS. They ask for things like, "I want a colour printer to print my photos, that I take with my digital camera". Then they expect a simple installation disk and almost plug and play setup with nice "easy" instructions.
So until you rush out and buy a digital camera, and it has linux intructions in the box, you're not likely to see it adopted for the consumer mainstream just yet.
You are comparing apples and oranges. It makes no sense to compare Microsoft Windows and "Linux". Linux is just a kernel. You have to compare Microsoft Windows to a specific distribution with a specific desktop. "Mandrake Linux running KDE" is as consistent as Microsoft Windows (and easier to use and more robust, IMO).
Is Windows inconsistent because there are plenty of Delphi and Windows 3.1 applications? Is Windows inconsistent because MS Office breaks many of the UI guidelines for Windows and uses a lot of widgets that are not available to regular developers? Is Macintosh OS X "inconsistent" because MS Office violates many OS X GUI guidelines? Because it runs X11 applications? Because it runs OS9 applications? Because there are Darwin-based distributions that only have X11? Does running Opera on Macintosh or Windows make those platforms inconsistent? Does the flood of poorly written, inconsistent, and ugly shareware and commercial software on Windows and Macintosh make those platforms inconsistent or bad?
Consistency isn't a technical attribute, it's about packaging and your personal choice of software. If you value consistency, pick a Linux distribution that offers it and don't use inconsistent applications. That's all the consistency you'll ever get, on Linux or any other platform.
I had the day off today so I installed Redhat 8.0 (SURPRISE!) and tried to get Mozilla 1.2 up and running with anti-aliased fonts. I wasted the whole day and I am glad to be back on Win2K (call me stupid or whatever... half the font stuff made me feel like a criminal - why isn't it *on* by default? I'll pay big bucks for that...). Linux is shooting itself in the foot with that respect. Everybody hears so much about Linux so they install it only to be disappointed to such an extreme that they'd never want to bother again (I know that I do not).
Mozilla has its own quirky GUI. Mozilla is inconsistent with the rest of the GUI on every platform, including Windows and Macintosh, why shouldn't it be inconsistent on Linux? If you run Konqueror, the KDE browser, under KDE you get font anti-aliasing plus a completely consistent GUI.
It's a historical quirk that Mozilla anti-aliasing is more difficult to configure for Mozilla on RedHat 8.0 than it is on Windows. On other distributions, it just works.
If you like Windows, stick with it, but don't whine about other platforms. You, after all, have a choice. The only people who have reason to complain are those who are forced to use platforms they don't like.
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!
You're talking about anecdotal evidence of a few vocal people vs. scientific surveys of thousands upon thousands of people from all parts of the world. I'd definitely say that "people" do *not* hate Microsoft.
I can also make a web page that says "penguins love David Hasselhoff", and if you searched Google, it'd probably be at the top of the list. That in no way, shape, or form validates the statement that "penguins love David Hasselhoff".
Come on, you are characterizing OSX and Windows in a completely inaccurate manner. Both systems are awash in mysticism, hacks, tricks, and "expertise". At least in a unix system its transparent.
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.
In my field(s) of study (bioinformatics, genetics, evolution, organismal and molecular biology), I can say that the open source movement has NOT been adopted by the majority. However, I have recently come across the R project (particularly Bioconductor.org ) which is HIGHLY respected by many MS-oriented biologists from a wide scope of fields. Many computational tasks which are limited to those who can fork out $6000 per year for a license, can be performed on R (for free). Although the learning curve is somewhat steep, I've found the documentation to be exceptional and have been able to execute my needs within a day or two. It has also come to my attention that many graduate students and professors across the country are actively learning R. Granted, many of the users of R are probably "sophisticated"- familar with SAS, C, or UNIX- but it seems to me that open-source is congruent with the peer-review process that so many academics are familiar with and value. I think, if we can introduce it to enough people, and explain to them WHY the open-source method (as opposed to proprietary software) is invaluable, it will become mainstream. R seems to be leading the way in academia at least...
God: "An inordinate fondness for beetles." -JBS Haldane-
If by "mainstream" he means dominant and common, Uncle Sam gave us the answer, illegal monopoly. Yep, if free software came installed on PCs right out of the box and enjoyed it's obvious price advantage, it would be dominant by now. There's nothing more difficult about maintaining a Linux box than an M$ 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
So far, recent problems with IE has caused my sister ona one of my friends to install mozilla to use as their primary browser. I also got my friend to download and install Xchat, because apparently she couldn't get the mirc download link to work (probably from a download site.)
Mozilla is the open source pet project of netscape, but Xchat is just a standard open source gui irc client. Obviously some open source applications are made easy enough that normal people would consider using them, yet many fail to design the application with any cares about what other people might find useful, in terms of an interface.
True you're going to get a lot of useless advice, and you probably have limited resources to implement features, but that's why you just add features that seem to be beneficial to a to-do list, and hope that if you don't have the time/skills, a contributor might decide to help add the feature for you.
Xchat surpassed mirc in terms of functionality (perl and python scripting) a long time ago, and has been comperable on user-friendlyness to mirc for a long time.
So yes, open source software can become as user-friendly, and retain more functionality than existing closed source alternatives. The alternative can also be said, GAIM (one of many open source IM clients) has been around a long time, and Trillian, an entirely closed source multiple IM client application outdoes GAIM in functionality, and arguably in userfriendlyness (since it's fully skinable, and skins can make apps looks and work in way that feels more natural to the end user, sometimes.)
Trillian isn't as mature as GAIM, and has only ever had 2 programmers working on it, and yet because they wanted to draw as many people as possible, they implemented the features they knew people wanted, as fast as they could, because they wanted to be able to have a product people would eventually pay for.
So, in markets where there is money to be made closed source will almost always have the advantage.
On a side note, the current problems the hardware industry is faced with is that hardware comes with only a limited warrenty, and that software comes with none. Imagine a car being sold that routed the exhaust through the interior vents, and A/C/heat through the exhaust pipe! You'd never get away with that in a car, but a motherboard with a comperable problem (keylock and HD led connectors routed wrong) was released by Asus not so long ago (thier dual AMD processor motherboard shipped like this.)
When hardware can and does sell with serious design flaws, that can never be repaired, not even with firmware upgrades then how can software ever be expected to be able to run stably on it?
Until a sane level of anti-lemon laws are applied to the industry we'll all be booting into edsels...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Open source is just like artificial intelligence. Everyone uses both, but noone has any idea they are already using them. Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer were both initially University-sponsored open source projects. That's pretty mainstream I say.
Hello?
Which mainstream user reads detailed documentation? Even when it's free and bundled in?
They'd rather struggle for hours (without reading the docs, or searching a few minutes on the web) then go out, open wallet and buy a yellow book with black markings. Maybe they'll read the docs if they had to pay them?
----
I don't understand the question either.
Mainstream people ARE using opensource software. It's all out there running the Internet - mailservers, nameservers, webservers, database servers. (Maybe they are not using opensource GUIs and desktops, but there are different reasons for that - otherwise Macs or Amigas would be more popular right? Network effects and execution).
They are not writing, administering or configuring the software. But "mainstream people" don't do that sort of thing either. Most "mainstream" people don't personally reconfigure the plumbing of their houses nor grind their own flour nor adjust the valve timing on their cars.
People who don't understand how car engines work won't understand documentation (no matter how good) about tuning engines. They will have to learn about the engines first, then only about tuning them. This takes time. And most people have other things to do.
Similarly, when you talk about Apache configuration, the documentation is not really difficult for people who are supposed to be doing that sort of thing - because they understand what a webserver is and what it does.
Dumbing down technical documentation for mainstream _users_ would be a totally stupid idea. Clear and organised documentation plus a few HOWTOs and examples would be just great. No damn paper clips, no stupid second guessing - "You seem to be configuring a web accelerator".
BTW: It's software when you configure it, it's hardware when someone else configures it. And when someone calls it "that thing" don't bother mentioning "configure" to them.
I think that typical open-source projects do target a higher-level of computer geekiness and sophisticated users, however there are many projects that attempt to make things simpler.
Meanwhile "mainstream" I think is moving up the technical ladder. As users get more skilled with computers and a bit more jaded towards the crap commercial software they buy, open source systems may be the next thing they try.
In combination, I think these trends would indicate some intersection at some point in the future, but probably not 2003 or even 2004.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
Embedded Linux is ever growing. The Open Source platform provides something a corporation can build profit-generating applications software on top of.
Basically, I see Linux and OSS in general as a way to implement relatively solved problems : widget sets, ptp encrypted communications, operating system, playing back mp3s. We also have some interesting applications, but we are generally too fragmented to appeal to the end user.
However, Apple has proven that building consistency on top of open source (as in bsd) can reduce costs for a company, thus benefitting the end user by reducing cost of the product (given competition).
Besides, we'll never be able to play those kick-ass windoze-only attachments people keep sending each other.
Stop the brainwash
Will Operating Systems and Apps that
1)are dirt cheap
2)are technically superior
3)have no need to maintain incompatability to sell new copies every odd year in order to gather revenue
4)have the *increase* of their userbase *rising* since about 3 years
5)are increasingly supported by authorities across the planet due to subtancial cut in costs
6)are generally prefered by programmers and tech savy due to extreme ease of modification and extension
7)are modular and generally plattformindependent all the way through
8)thus justify customized hardware for special task
9)are a good reason to sell faster hardware - as they do need more processpower due to their modular nature
10)don't need severe company support of their developerbase
11)are easyly intergrated into a existing softwarecompanys portfolio due to mature sophistication
12)run on older existing hardware that's not supported by proprietary concepts anymore
ever become mainstream?
You bet.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yeah, but in the US they're no longer scandals. Here you tell someone that George Bush gave $661,000,000 from our taxes to GE to repay them for $4,000,000 in campaign contributions and they just shrug their shoulders like it's all just part of it.
Think about it.... The Enron scandal. GWB flew to every campaign stop on the Enron Corporate Jet. After the company falls apart, none of the national news can "draw a connection" between Ken Lay and GWB. Harken made the news briefly over here. None of our national news media has reported on the fact that Hamed Karzai was a consultant for the US (Oil) company Unocal right up until assuming the presidency of Afghanistan.
Just because we Americans think it's immoral doesn't mean we don't accept it like the good little sheep that we are.
For I'm proud to be an American,
Where I'll always have gas
'Cause we sent all our teens
To kick Afghani ass.
And I'll gladly stand there next to you
And steal Iraqui oil away
Ain't no doubt he's got an evil plan....
God bless the USA
~Hammy
It should be obvious to even the most casual observer that the advantages of these items are increased as the number of people using said software increases. It should also be obvious that the "clone" strategy for these kinds of items is doomed to fail. Software moves too fast.
The only logical consequence is that there can be only 1 "mainstream" example of these.
Why, though, would the obviously crappiest examples of these have "won"? Open source software can't possibly be "the one" until it learns to deal with the fundamental reasons Microsoft won. The two main reasons are that corporations feel they can't afford to:
have only 1 company they theoretically could buy (eventually commoditized) hardware from... explaining Apple's loss
buy software that doesn't have a commercial support structure maintained by some company they can (feel like they can) trust to support it.
Yes, it's strange that software doesn't obey the same kinds of rules that hardware obeys, but even corporations can't change the facts that make unifying major chunks of software so advantageous.
And you *can* clone hardware adequately (but, of course, only in symbiosis with a "winning" OS that can virtualize the small differences that remain).
It doesn't matter what else the Open Source community does. It's not about the price or the features.
You forgot one. Does the Internet not run on BIND? Open Source already is mainstream. With BIND, Apache, and Sendmail, Open Source is used on a huge number of servers all over the world. It already is mainstream in the same way that Cisco is mainstream. Cisco is everywhere even though it is not on every desk or rack.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
I 100% agree with you. I *am* using Linux on my desktop and have been for quite some time now, but it's painful.
I've been deliberately sticking with RH because it's the most common distro. But there are many problems not isolated to Red Hat's overzealous behavior (and gcc 2.96).
KDE lacks an underlining spellchecker, in particular for KMail. Do you know how much you come to take a passive and unobtrusive underlining spellchecker for granted, especially when presented with a popup window asking you for interaction on *every single word* it thinks you've misspelled?
Allegedly, that feature is coming in KDE 3.2. But most Windows apps have had that feature since 1996. And we wonder why Gates is a rich man.
Xine is a great video player, but rather than adding something as basic as a repeat button or as essential as a working GUI that doesn't have decorative do-nothing buttons, the developers are running around trying to devise a logo for it. All the logos so far have looked like they were made by 14-year-old East Berlin Run Lola Run fans. I cannot show my boss software with logos and GUIs which are that tacky: there's no way I'll get it onto the desktops.
Browsing a collection of 2,800 MP3s on a local hard drive is dead slow. It takes my Pentium III-500 several minutes to show the contents of this directory. Why? I think KDE/Gnome are checking EACH and EVERY file. A similar problem occurs when I open a directory full of images, and it appears attempt to generate several thousand thumbnails on-the-fly, rather than using a caching scheme and merely checking for new ones. And no, I think a PIII-500 should be perfectly adequate for browsing a directory full of MP3s. I'm not bitching about the fact that it's too slow to play DVDs in xine (but oddly enough, PowerDVD in Windows is just fine).
OpenOffice is a good start, but that's all I'll call it. OpenOffice Calc doesn't have half the statistical functions of Excel, which amazes me given the fact that it springs from Sun. Sun is, of course, the engineer's workstation of choice, so it blows my mind that I can't find a built-in function to do a linear (let alone quadratic) regression from Calc. Excel has done them for years. OO is slow, fat, and quite frankly, ugly. And while I have designed radar video processing systems in use on ships around the world, I still haven't figured out how to get OO to put fucking page numbers on my documents.
I sometimes suspect that the people who write this software don't actually use it.
There has to be some sort of organization dedicated to improving the desktop Linux experience, or else we're all screwed.
Check out this link on Linux desktops: www.glowingplate.com/dissent
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Public domain was wide spread in years past however Microsoft put quite a bit of effort to put an end to that.
The Commodore 64 and Vic 20 had public domain published in the user manuals.
The 1540 and 1541 floppy drives had disks with public domain software. Comal (Not Cobal) had some public domain sorce code available.
Early days you had to download source code as text.. this before Xmodem download protocal was ever born.. even then it was kinda populare to make available portable public domain basic programs.
But thats in the day when programmers generally expected that commertal programmers to write there own stuff and NOT steal more than maybe a few snippets of code.
But it's happend at least once when a public domain program has become commertal and all credit to the original author has been stripped.
Back in those days it could actually land you in jail as the athoritys don't know the program was yours to begin with. Today the net self documents the true legacy of your hard work.
IBM and Microsoft desided to include only a primitive software develupment tool with Dos and sold Macro Asembler sepretly for $100. This discuraged public domain and insured pubic domain take the shape of binary only code.
Windows went even ferther providing no software develupment tools of any sort with Windows and the software dev tools sold sepretly were extreamly high priced.
Microosoft wasn't alone. Unix was designed to have the C compiler as part of the Os but many Unix venders would leave it out.
That's what drove me to Linux BTW.. I just wanted to be sure I'd always have my compiler.
Still some public domain programmers are presistant.
There has always been a large group of free software develupers it's just been a hard time to get that software into the publics hands.
In the past free software authors relied on Commodore, Apple, Atari, Digital Research etc to get the word out. But Microsoft would rather sillence than explote free software.
As Apple, Compaq and Del tap free software to enhance sales users will come to use it.
This won't mean Microsoft is doomed as I'm still thinking of free software on Windows.
But open source will be more widely accepted. In the past it wasn't just accepted in some cases it was expected. Thats the whole reason for software piracy. SOme people won't accept the idea that any software isn't free.
I don't actually exist.