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Open Source Spreads Beyond Software

Posted by timothy on from the blueprints-have-open-source-beat dept.

B'Trey writes "Britain's Prospect Magazine is running an article entitled 'The Microsoft Killers.' The article covers the success of Open Source software in particular but also looks at how the methods and practices of Open Source are moving outside the software environment."

5 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. will this work... by freerecords · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ..I think the idea is extremely novel! however, i don't think it will work simply because of the measurability of "good things". ie. in software we can always pick, and recommend, Mozilla over IE., not only cos it is open source, but because it is better security wise. however how do you tell someone that "OpenCoke" is better than Coca-cola, can this be done? if it tasted as good and didn't rot your teeth i guess so.. heh, but i dont think prices can be cut - and freeness is one of the big drawing factors to OS/GPL products... what do you think?
    by the way, i'm allergic to flames!
    Tim

    --
    tim
  2. Microsoft Killers : Premature? by Puchku · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A little premature for such a title maybe. F/OSS needs to concentrate on the details.. God is in the details, and this is where MIcrosoft excels. Sure, they have their shortcoming, but they Human Interface designs are uniform at least..

    1. Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? by qoquaq · · Score: 5, Interesting
      It's your customer which defines the OS experience. If your customer is a new computer user ... the software should be intelligent enough to configure itself.

      If your user is an engineer ... mounting devices as drives is something the customer may know how to do so your software must be intelligent enough to do that well.

      Apple ... fault them if you must but ... they have such great attention to the user experience. Hide the bits in an abstraction known as Macintosh, their customer does not want to see drivers and mount points. This is their starting point, that is their customer. How can we delight the user with the Macintosh expeirence, not the low level details of the O1 scheduler. I don't mean to start a Mac/Linux/Windows holy war but I do need an example here .

      With Linux that starting point and customer are different. Most of the distributions which are ready for the desktop have a customer in mind who is using Windows 2000 at work or Windows ME at home. This is the user experience which they start with. I think some people here agree that is starting off a bit handicapped.

      The Mac customer does not even want to know what a driver is or does.

      The point I'm bearly making here is its about the customer ... and what experience you want for that customer. Will Linux overtake the desktop? ... Sure if the desktop really begins to abstract the fact you are running Linux and does a better job of creating the a great customer experience for more customers than everyone else.

      --

      "They say travel broadens the mind, so I went over the falls in a barrel." -Thomas Dolby

  3. Excellence takes time.... by LibrePensador · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As you recognized towards the end of your post, the small details are being addressed at many levels. Stay tuned for a Linux distribution near you.

    In fact, your specific example has been dealt with by Mandrake and Suse for the past 2/3 years. Where have you been?

    And how do they do it? Better than Windows, most times.

    No driver CD necessary. If it's supported, plug in the camera and it shows up on your desktop. Click on it and get your pictures. Now that was easy, wasn't it.

    I am not impervious to criticism and there are tons of things that need improvement, but they are coming. Anyone who has used Linux for the past five years cannot be blind to the huge improvements in ease-of-use and consistency that have been made.

    Finally, the community aspect of Linux is not to be dismissed. When I set somebody up with Linux, I make sure that his/her every whim is satisfied so that the experience is more positive than it was with their prior OS.

    --
    Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
  4. Groklaw is a non-programming example of this by FunWithHeadlines · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "Open source is a philosophy for software licensing designed to encourage the improvement and use of software by anyone who wants to join in. It ensures that the source code, the underlying instructions of the software, can be examined and modified freely.

    The open source movement eschews proprietary controls and its software is usually produced not by firms, but by networks of volunteers who look after different pieces of an application."

    Groklaw is an example of this exact method, even though it is not involved in software development. It is a legal site that encourages anyone to join in, the results are not produced by law firms, but by networks of volunteers who look after different pieces of the legal brief. It started as one woman's personal blog and then took off when the FOSS community saw the usefulness of having a subject matter expert in law commenting on cases that mattered to the community. So the community joined in and now it's a distributed project on the exact model of an Open Source programming project.

    So these principles work for more than just programming. It's a useful model for any community project. The power of the community made manifest. We're stronger when we work together.