Open-Source Software and "The Luxury of Ignorance"

Bootsy Collins writes "Using the recent experience of trying to configure CUPS on his home network, Eric Raymond has written an interesting new screed on poor design of user interfaces in general, and configuration interfaces in particular, in open source software, entitled The Luxury of Ignorance. A sample quote: 'This kind of fecklessness is endemic in open-source land. And it's what's keeping Microsoft in business -- because by Goddess, they may write crappy insecure overpriced shoddy software, but on this one issue their half-assed semi-competent best is an order of magnitude better than we usually manage.'"

Comments

Re:Here's all he actually says

[Funksaw]

Why the hell aren't we? Linux will never take back the desktop, nor will open-source, as long as this continues - in my opinion, all major open-source projects should freeze - right at this instant - all code dealing with function, and start focusing on form. Yes, form follows function, but only if you actually bother on form!

Re:ESR is Right

[jrcamp]

Hello? You're using Gentoo. If you want a distro that "just works" you're in the totally wrong ballpark.

1. Canon Powershot A40 digital camera.

Start Digikam, select your Canon model, download pictures. No kernel recompilation there. Why are you messing with the command line? Welcome to the GUI!

Sorry, no experience with webcams so I can't say.

3. Nvidia GeForce4 Ti4200.

Under SuSE, launch the fetchnvidia script and WOW, it installs the kernel module itself and even alters your XF86Config file! No recompile involved here either.

Your complaints are pure troll. You complain about having to recompile the kernel 4 times but you're using Gentoo. What do you think you're doing? If you don't want to recompile your kernel every time use a binary distro like SuSE or Mandrake.