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Will Open Source Ever Become Mainstream?
Prabhu Ramachandran asks: "I am a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley and as part of a course project I am trying to gather comments on the following question: Will the Open Source and Free Software communities develop software that will find widespread adoption amongst the mainstream, or is such software, by its nature, suitable only for sophisticated users?
As part of my literature survey I found an academic perspective that seemed to indicate that open source projects do not reach the mainstream because the developers tend to listen only to their smartest customers. There also seems to be a lack of detailed documentation and an easy-to-use interface which normally attract the not-so-sophisticated users. I would like to hear the thoughts of Open Source developers and others on this issue. If you would like to view my references or the comments posted on a website hosted for this purpose, please visit my website." There have already been some interesting comments posted on his website. What is your take on this issue?
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
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.
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Open source -- as we know it today, has so many things wrong with it I can't even begin to tell you..
:) (yes, those things cost money -- sometimes money needs to be spent).
1> Documentation is usually 2nd priority. In my world, if there's no documentation, there's no product.
2> The product is usually 2nd rate. Because there's often no money on the line, my experience has been that the programmers take less accountability for their efforts. Big bug? Guess you have to wait until the programmer (or someone else) gets around to it. Big bug in a program you paid thousands of dollars for? My experience is that enough screaming can get you a patch in very little time.
3> The user interace is lacking severely. Bigger companies hire people who specialize in usability to the design the UI. Open-source projects have HORRID user interfaces (A perfect example of this would be Request Tracker -- the software rocks.. the documentation sucks, and the awkward user interface effectively makes the product useless for large-scale deployments).
Open-source definitely has it's place. It's fabulous for the "quick fix it" jobs and the "I've got lots of time on my hands to figure it out and fix any problems I find" solutions. Sadly, however, my experience has been that this stuff is only truely free if your time is worthless.
Don't get me wrong.. I love open-source software. I wouldn't be able to do my job without it -- but with these drawbacks, it will never take the place of the mission-critical elements where I can hold someone responsible with I don't get what I need.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
If you want to see mainstream adoption of open source, you have to look outside of the USA. If you follow the Linux news sites you'll see lots of foreign organizations, particularly governments, looking to make big switchovers to Linux and other open source software. Bill and Steve have been doing a lot of travelling lately, offering what basically amounts to bribes to keep these organizations on Windows.
So yes, the world has already started the mainstream move to open source, but the United States is the last place you'll see this effect -- because we're too heavily entrenched in Microsoft crap to be among the first.
This parallels other technology shifts. Why do other nations have wireless networks that are so much better than those found in the USA? Because they didn't become heavily entrenched in landlines the way the USA did, so they were able to leapfrog. It's the same way with software: fewer installations of Microsoft crap mean an easier deployment of something else.
Just give it time. Basic economics will work it out.
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Open Source development is done on free time, except for the lucky few who are sponsored. That makes it a hobby and hobbies are for fun.
Dealing with non computer literate people is not fun; it is work. Given this contradiction I doubt that "pure" Open Source will ever become mainstream.
However, I can see the possiblity of the hybrid open source / commercial groups succeeding in that area. These organizations (such as SuSE) pay people to do the boring stuff like write documentation targeted at non-techies and so forth.
Mainstream :
: : :
Apache, Sendmail, Pine (used in almost every university of the country), GCC.
Potential Mainstream with primary need:
Mozilla - word of mouth and improvement in stability
Ximian Evolution - word of mouth and hands on use.
OpenOffice - word of mouth, universal office document format
Linux -
for the general internet browser
better GUI, fonts, documentation, games and more applications.
for the new power user
better GUI, fonts, documentation
for the professional
better documentation
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
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!
infighting, bashing, selfish, attention-grabbing individuals
You've never worked on a large, *closed source*, commercial, proprietary software project before have you?
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.
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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).
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
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.
Most of the net and probably most corporate and military servers runs apache and sendmail
Linux on the server is mainstream but...
I think what he is trying to ask is:
Will Joe User ever be able to sit down at a given open source workstation (i.e. - Linux on the desktop) and find enough consistency with every other open source workstation such that he/she can get something done without spending countless hours reading HOWTOs, message boards, distribution-specific documentation and performing mind-numbing tweaking at the four corners of the operating system?
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).
WTF?
I would be GLAD to give several hundred dollars to any company that can make a consistent, user-friendly, non-MS OS for my x86 hardware (all of it, not just some). Is this possible? Apple - where are you?
Linux will be ready for the desktop when Gnome or KDE drop dead (I can't wait) and some consistency settles in. Until then, I'll run BSD on my servers (the documentation is much better as a result of the consistency) and Windows on the desktop.
Cheetos!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
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
If you could buy something in a Texas Wal-Mart a couple of years ago, would you say it deserves the name "mainstream"?
:)
If yes, then it's too late for Linux to escape, because I've done that.
Nicely boxed, manual-included Linux distros have been around for years (in national chain stores), and "open source" covers things a lot less radical, like say the Phoenix browser. Lots of Windows users don't think of themselves as too far from the mainstream justs because they're using a better browser than IE
tiothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
What's wrong with software for "sophisticated users?"
Nothing.
Somewhere, pundits have declared that Open Source and Free Software must appeal to the masses in order to be a "success."
If anything, the desire to attract the masses is a primary reason why commercial software stinks. It's bloated, complex, and wasteful -- because it tries to be everything to everyone.
Open/Free Software, on the other hand, lacks the financial incentive that dilutes creativity and effectiveness in commercial products. "Free" has many connotations, including the freedom to be original and precise.
Open/Free software can not be treated as a monolithic block; "popularity" means very different things to developers of various projects. Where KDE and Gnome care deeply about being popular, many (many) other projects do not.
Freedom is about choice -- some projects chose to chase popularity, while others focus on being the best available tool for a discerning audience. Trying to declare a goal of "popularity" for all Open/Free software is myopic at best and counter-productive at worst.
All about me
I would be GLAD to give several hundred dollars to any company that can make a consistent, user-friendly, non-MS OS for my x86 hardware (all of it, not just some). Is this possible? Apple - where are you?
One of the reasons Apple's OS works so well is that it's integrated with its hardware, designed to work with it not just on top of it. Apple is in the consistency biz, which is why they wouldn't be interested in selling a copy of OS X for the ugly monster that is PC hardware, unless of course it was their own x86-based design, with the advantages of current Mac hardware.
Why not take that several hundred dollars and just save it- and use it to buy a Mac when your PCs outlive their usefulness in a year or two.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
And this is the question he should be asking -
"Will Free/Open Source authors/users ever admit that they have to listen to end users, or will they continue their elite cries of "RTFM!" whenever a "luser" can't do something that is perfectly fucking obvious?"
Sadly the answer seems to be NO as you gentlemen have shown. It's not whether Open Source/Free software is capable of beating Microsoft at their own game; I truly believe that MS would die the death of a thousand cuts if all the hackers out there just got their shit together and tried to produce a real windows replacement. However that isn't what it's all about. It's about producing cool stuff to be used by those in the know, and it's never about producing hand-holding software like Apple's iPhoto. Sure there might be something like iPhoto in some ways but was the primary focus to write an app that would act, as Gassee used to say, as a "tractor" app? Didn't think so.
Amen brother... Let me lay some experience on ya.
.gov she works for would not accept it. Who will support it? Is there a # we can call if it breaks?? Is training material availiable??
.gov and since there was no database connector for mysql (was one for MSsql2000) building that connector would have been another issue in developing it.
.gov sites run on MS, but case in point, it's not because they have underqualified admins.
You would be surprised by how many military web servers are running IIS. There are a lot of underqualified administrators out there and the military is no exception.
Ok I happen to be married to someone that runs a lot of goverment websites both internal and external. Last year she came to me asking about content management...
I took it as an oppertunity to preach about how well postnuke had worked out for me, citing it's run without a hiccup 2 years straight without a glitch (check my sig)
The sad thing is though, the branch of the
That was just for the web portion of it. Trying to convince them that a totally FREE linux/php/apache/mysql solution was better than M$ was like pulling teeth. Even though we could show them it ran on windows, it was so foriegn to them that they just flat out refused it completely.
There was other issues too, they have an ancient database on this branch of the
There's both good and bad reasons why some
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
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.
Talk about jumping in at the deep end! Antialiased fonts are brand new to Linux, and although it's the best at them (no really, compare some screenshots, it beats OS X hands down), not everything supports it yet.
To get Mozilla with antialiased fonts, uninstall the current Mozilla RPMs and use these:
Redhat XFT RPMS
On RedHat, it's that simple. I dunno what you were trying to do, but hopefully this will make it easier for you.
verybody 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).
Well, I'm sorry that you expected Linux to be perfect and then it wasn't. Remember that on Windows XP (at least on all the installs I've ever used) it doesn't even antialias most text, so that's hardly a mainstream feature. But yes, point taken. It's not perfect. It'll never be perfect, that's impossible. It is getting better very fast.
Linux will be ready for the desktop when Gnome or KDE drop dead (I can't wait) and some consistency settles in.
Not going to happen. It's called competition, it's natural, healthy and good, and it happens in every other part of life. We manage somehow. As for UI consistency, that's improving in leaps and bounds too. In fact in RedHat 8 the differences between KDE and GNOME apps are marginal, mostly hidden. What was lacking in consistency for you?
Well the solution they ended up going with (the name escapes me at the moment) was a $200k solution (not a typo)
The support contract specifically states that the software vendor has to come out on site and install it, train users, fix it remotely anytime and a 24hr turnaround for anything that requires a live person.
Perhaps if the makers of nuke, slash, ect all got off their collective asses, actually marketing their software in addition to keeping the open source strategy they've used and provided "services" as well as software perhaps this would have turned out differently. The fact that they rely "solely" on open source to market their code is just shooting themselves in the foot.
Hey Malda, just a question, is a 200k sale worth a dog and pony show to you?
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.
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!