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

[Neo-Rio-101]

Well in a perfect world, Clippy would jump up and say "I see you have plugged a xxxx-model-brandname printer into the USB port. Would you like me to configure it for you?" Oh shyiayhtye.... score one for Microsoft.

ad-hominem IS the argument

[Gothmolly]

My question is why does this guy make the front page of Slashdot? Don't tell me he's the only blogger on the Internet who's so wise and profound.

Re:MS network printer setup worse

[rmpotter]

Glad you pointed this out. I had to re-remember how to do this a couple of weeks ago. I lucked out and got it working quickly, but it was not intuitive. On the otherhand, MS makes it easy for most of their users (who are probably just doing simple peer-to-peer resource sharing.