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Five Fundamental Problems with Open Source?
meriksen asks: "I found a very interesting paper which I am sure will stir up a hornets nest.
Despite the growing success of the Open Source movement, most of the general public continues to feel that Open Source software is inaccessible to them. This paper discusses five fundamental problems with the current Open Source software development trend, explores why these issues are holding the movement back, and offers solutions that might help overcome these problems." What do you think of the issues given in this paper, and how do you think the Open Source community should address these issues?
"The lack of focus on user interface design causes users to prefer proprietary software's more intuitive interface. Open Source software tends to lack the complete and accessible documentation that retains users. Developers focus on features in their software, rather than ensuring that they have a solid core. Open Source programmers also tend to program with themselves as an intended audience, rather than the general public. Lastly, there is a widely known stubbornness by Open Source programmers in refusing to learn from what lessons proprietary software has to offer. If Open Source software wishes to become widely used and embraced by the general public, all five of these issues will have to be overcome."
The solution is to provide motivation to write for someone else. There are a lot of companies out there making a lot of money off open-source, selling hardware or services. If they want open-source programmers to write code differently, they need to provide some motivation for that change. One possibility would be an annual award program which could include - for example - a "best documentation" category. The combination of a cash prize (it needn't be large) plus the bragging rights for having won could provide the necessary nudge to improving open-source code.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Open-source software does lack documentation geared towards the "common user". The documentation that is out there always seems to only understood by the geek.
One serious problem is the lack of a standardized, easy-to-use (=click-and-point) installation program and the fragmentation of package management (rpm. deb. tar, whatever).
The owls are not what they seem
(I keed! I keed...)
i have to say, that my own personal reason for not using an OS that is open.... is because i can't figure that shit out. i've been spoiled by microsoft. make it more friendly, and more ppl will use it
Are hardly exclusive to Open Source development. Plenty of closed sourced projects suffer from the exact same things, and plenty of open source pojects do not.
Part of the problem, I believe, must also be the inadequacy of software download websites. In general Open Source distributions are tricky to obtain and install. The sites are difficult to navigate and provide too many download options that reqiure understanding beyond what most users posess. i.e., should I download the "source" or "binary" version? "Stand-alone" or "self-installing?" All of these are terms outside the average user's vocabulary. Worse, many simply link to those SourceForge sites where users are presented with myriad different versions of the same product--some not even stable.
Religious blindness
.Net good, use .Net, write everything in C#, Java bad, GPL evil, etc.
Doesn't seem to me to be specifically open sourcey (sp?) to be religious about technical issues. I mean just look at Microsoft, they are a frikkin' technical monopoly:
John.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
usability.
ESR's rant over CUPS is something we need more of.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
"Developers focus on features in their software, rather than ensuring that they have a solid core."
You are kidding right? This is probably so much more true of proprietary software (to bring up the obvious - there is no open source clippy). Except for that, it's hard to disagree with the interface and documentation arguments on the whole, however keep in mind the rapid development pace that some open source projects move at, if you look just at the 'stable' projects you will usually find much better interfaces and documentation.
I think that the only issue with Open Source boils down to this:
The things that nobody wants to do, but somebody has to.
Nobody wants to think about documentation. Or user interfaces. These things are hard, tedious, and a hell of a lot more boring than actually coming up with stuff to "make things work".
It's the reason why Windows is pretty easy to use. Personally, I think that OS X is the preferred model that many business should think about: having an open source "core" (BSD or Linux, whatever) with standard interfaces, then having the companies business be working on the upper levels: the stuff you have to see, since that's what you can pay somebody to work on.
Novell is taking such an approach, I believe, along with IBM. The issues with how to handle memory and the things that 99% of the people never see, let that get put out there so it becomes stronger. Faster. Better, and if nobody "owns" it, then everybody can use it to make their business better - fosters competition.
But your job is to provide the "service layer", such as with Novell/IBM admin tools to administrate those underlying pieces, or Apple giving you a nice "standardized" GUI where everything just works with the rock solid core.
These issues in the paper are not new - but they're the things that somebody, somewhere down the line, has to fork up for. And that's where I'm content to let a business pick up that slack and fill a product niche on top of Open Source software.
Granted, of course, they play by the rules, and let the rest of the community in on what they did so we can all benefit and get better.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I really agree with this. For example, there are a few software programs that I use and would like to recommend to people, but then I remember the long text based config file, or other small things that prevent the naive user from getting software working properly.
Little things like this make programming something about 10x easier (which is why most open source programmers do it, even I do it), but really do leave out the general public.
I mean look at the most popular open source programs (going by sourceforge). You have DC++, which has a beautiful interface, much better than its closed source counterpart (also more useful). You have Gaim, again designed with the interface and users in mind.
What is the common factor among the list? A pretty GUI. How many powerful console applications do you see up there? Very few.
The author definetly has a point.
Now if I can only get her to quit forwarding me those retarded chain letters we'll be all set.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Open Source seems to ignore this whenever it becomes inconvenient to pay attention to it. Yes, there are exceptions. But it is not infreqeunt to encounter somethign akin to, 'users of verions prior to X.yz must completely redo a whole lot of things because we changed underlying structures'
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Developers focus on features in their software, rather than ensuring that they have a solid core.
This motivation is even more present for commercial apps; developers are asked to add every feature that somebody suggests in a focus group, etc. for better advertising - e.g, We have this feature and $COMPETITOR doesn't! Many of the Windows security scares have been due to poorly thought out features becoming bugs; for example, using ActiveX or VBScript to "spice up" web pages or Outlook's tendency to "enhance" emails by displaying HTML
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
One thread I've noticed emerging in the comments here is that of "but non open source stuff has the same problems". Why should it matter if the non open source stuff has the same problems? If it's a problem at all, should it not be addressed?
After all, addressing a problem that other guys haven't is a good way to improve the chances of getting ahead.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
The article brings up lots of good point that in general I don't have too many problems with, but frankly I don't see how most of these are FOSS specific. For every issue he highlights I can point to just as much closed source software that exhibits the same problems. I think the basic arguement behind all of this is a profit margin helps fix these problems, when in reality they don't. There's pleanty of closed source software that's counter intuitive, badly documented, bloated and doesn't do exactly what I want it to do, and there are examples in the FOSS world where the developers actually do care about the above issues.
I actually think these are exellent points to bring up about *all* software, as most, regardless of development methodology, suffer from one or more of these issues.
No, the thing holding back more widespread adoption of open source is that nearly no one currently would want it shipped already-installed on new computers.
Make it good enough that ordinary users demand it, and adoption will come automatically.
Wrong.
First off, it does ship on a minority of new computers. And, heck, it's about as easy to install Linux as it is to reinstall Windows.
Secondly, and more importantly, OSS isn't widely adopted because, while free, it doesn't work as well or better than its proprietary counterparts in all aspects.
A fine example of this is GIMP. I've installed it at home and at work, but I wound up doing most of my edits in Photoshop today because it does the task better.
(Another good example of this is OOo; if you want a summation, check out my journal.)
I think she missed the biggest reason of all here: Designing a good GUI is very hard. Wait -- let me further clarify that: it's very, very hard.
Designing a GUI from scratch requires a sense of aesthetics (balance, color, flow) and the ability to decide exactly what needs to be up front, and what needs to be hidden behind a menu, option button, or some such. Frequently the developer will have a fervent opinion about "this is the most important thing, it must be on top" whereas a good user interface designer can step back and see what will work for the users. A good UI designer will also run user acceptance labs to test their designs. Many open source projects end up with little more than "Hey Bill, would you check this out for me?" And Bill, being aware of the project from its inception, and having heard about it over the lunch table for the last five months, already posesses a deeper understanding of the task that prevents him from being able to adequately judge the design.
Apple, of course, has always been at the forefront of GUI design (at least as a commercial success, I'm fully aware of the contributions of Xerox Parc, et al.) I believe this comes from a strong, single, visionary designer, a rigid set of GUI design guidelines that must be absolutely followed, and a corporate mindset that the GUI is the most important aspect of an application. They undergo rigorous testing procedures, and countless user feedback labs. Microsoft hasn't ever caught up to Apple in that respect, although they do have a good set of GUI guidelines and some very strong products.
But nobody in the open source world wants to be "told what to do". Also, nobody in the open source world feels they have the authority to stand up and say "you must design your GUI in this fashion." Some projects, of course, will have beautiful, solid GUIs thanks to having a quality GUI designer on the project. But that currently doesn't pan out beyond the scope of the single good application. So the consistency isn't there, and it will never be there until someone puts together a GUI committee that has the authority to stamp "Tux Approved -- Good GUI Inside" on open source projects. It will require a single, strong voice. And that voice has to have a world of talent behind it. That's a mighty tall order for hundreds of grass-roots volunteer efforts to come up with.
John
Code can be split into parts and reused. A professional programmer benefits by having a large body of good open source code.
Documentation, on the other hand, is much more likely to be a one-shot thing. If a professional technical writer were to write, say, a terrific GIMP manual, and release it open source, it's not likely that they are going to get anything back that will help them on other documentation projects, at least to the extent a coder gets for releasing code.
Same for UI designers.
Basically, good open source documentation and UI design comes from people doing it as an act of charity, whereas there are good practical reasons for people to write open source code.
Open Source companies have tons of money. Look at all the kernel hackers they hire to work on stuff.
Red Hat spent $700,000,000 on buying out compiler companies and dot-coms, and then the reason their programmers give me for why their software has usability problems is "we can't afford an HCI department."
Linux companies like Red Hat (and Suse, bought out for $200,000,000) have tons of money. It's just that they don't consider usability to be very high on their list of priorities. To these folks, its only the technical stuff and server stuff that matters. Screw having a properly trained user interaction dept that makes their software easier to use.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
1) User interface design
Good UI design is hard. A good UI designer might not even be able to code and hardcore coders generally don't make very good UI designers. It's simply not what they're interested in and so it gets only as much time and effort as is absolutely necessary. We, as a community have built some wonderful code, but not many in the community are actually UI designers. We need to find and motivate more of these people.
2) Documentation
Documentation is time consuming and not very rewarding for coders. As with UI designers, we need a large group of people who get kicks out of writing documentation and there are just too few of those special people. We need more of these people too. Trusting these tasks to the coders isn't enough.
3) Feature-centric development
Features are rewarding for developers and guess where they put their time.. Project managers are meant to drive the scope and direction of a project. Most of time, the project manager is the lead coder by default. Got to entice a few of these management types over too..
4) Programming for the self
This has an almost identical effect to #1 and the solution is the same. People who are good at usability issues must be found and enticed to contribute. Unfortuantely, we don't have much to offer in reward. Recognition? Nope... The coders/project managers get the credit for the released program. Money? Nope.. We're not talking about commercial software. Beer and Pizza? That's probably our best shot, but I'm not convinced.
5) Religious blindness
Blatently wrong, at least for a significant population of the community. Quite of few recent articles soundly debunk this.
So, it's not going to "fix" itself and there is not much we can do to alter the situation. People are doing this for fun. If it's fun to work on features rather than write documentation, that's what they'll do. Commercial software will always have an advantage in this respect because people are paid to do the work they don't enjoy.
So let me get this straight:
You say that OSX is a great example of interface design, because real live people have told you so... and KDE or Gnome are poor examples of interface design, because of an imaginary scenario?!?!?!
For the record, I've put people (such as my mother) in front of a KDE desktop, and they've had no problems with it (in fact my mother said how much she liked it.)
Note that neither this, nor the author's experience actually has any bearing on whether KDE or Gnome are usable or not.
Using the exact same methodology in this article, I could prove that MS has no money, that the moon is made of green cheese, and that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. (Hmm, come to think of it, maybe this guy works for the White House.)
Remember kids, if you can imagine it, it must be true!
*sigh*
... The writer is *female*....
And as everyone knows, females are the only members of the species who seem to need documentation anyway... What male would ever admit to needing such a thing, unless he was out of toilet paper!
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
In this post, I use the general term "Violent Puppy Rape", though often I'm exclusively discussing consensual sex between adults.
I enjoy watching violent puppy rape.
Lumping the latter in with the former helps no-one, least of all the puppies.
...most documentation isn't even good enough to wipe your arse on, free, open source or otherwise..
I do agree to an extent with the writer. The main focus of open source is often from a programmers point of view, so most programmers or computer savy people are more confortable with it. KDE and GNOME have vastly improved, but still have a few weak areas.
In the case of a mac, my roommmate can go to the Mac store and buy a printer, camera, video camer, software, install it and use and not have to think about how to get it running. You can't do that with Linux, there are few if any stores that sell Linux software, linux cameras, linux video cameras, etc, ( except for online stores ). Buy a quickcam 4000 and try to get it running. You must download special software and then 'compile...' I'm sorry but once you start haveing to require a person to compile anything they loose interest if all they want to do is use the computer. Most people think of the computer as a tool to do a task and don't want to f*** with the OS to get stuff done. Redhat and SuSE and several other vendors and programmers have made installing it and using it somewhat easier, yes, but my experience has been Mac is easeier to use, and I use Linux as my primary desktop. Windows is even easier to use.
The difference is that both Windows and Mac have UI designers, that work at the whole look and feel and making things easier for the end user. Most open source projects dont have that and need it desperately.
I think the point that you may have missed in the article is that the design of most open source is by a programmer and used by other programmers who understand all this stuff. End Users dont. I do, but I'm a programmer.
To many of the HOWTOS out there are missing a few things here and there and require a little debugging. They usually cover the majority of cases, but people don't want to read a how to they want to turn on a computer and it just works. The reason cell phones have gained such a huge acceptance today is because you just turn it on and it works. That is what made Palm so liked, was the fact that it was a simple UI. This is what Mac is famous for. The simple to use UI. of course if someone tells an open source programmer that their UI is lacking, they take offense. Hey why shouldn't they! They did it for free.
Bottom line is you get what you pay for!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
If you don't like it, extend it, fix it, or hire someone to do so. Don't dump your personal application requirements on community members who are just trying to share what they have.
So what you're really saying is "hey, you didn't have to pay for it, so just sit there and shut up about how bad it is. We don't care about your problems with it and we're not going to fix it. If you think you know so much, why don't you go fix it?"
And people wonder why average users consider OSS proponents to be arrogant and egocentric?
Nothing pisses me off more than someone who demands the world for free, then bitches and whines because they can't have it without putting in an effort.
And some people, instead of putting in that effort, will choose to simply buy proprietary software right off the shelf that does what they want, how they want it, and without them needing to learn how to program in Perl, Python, C++, and learn the intricacies of vi. And Linux will remain within the reach of only those who have the technical wherewithall to use it or the stubborn patience to learn it (about 5% of the world) while everyone else goes and buys Windows. Linux users feel all smug, superior and happy while Microsoft laughs all the way to the bank.
But hey! Linux users can feel all smug, superior, and happy knowing that they "put in an effort." And that's what's really important at the end of the day, right?
To paraphrase you, nothing pisses me off more than someone so damned unbending and stubborn that they're willing to take a platform I believe in (Linux) and refuse to allow it to mature into something that could displace Microsoft. Instead, you'd prefer we return to the Bad Old Days when users had to conform to the software instead of the other way around, and everyone needed a Computer Science degree in order to work a PC. I'd prefer we move forward instead of backwards, embracing new users and accomodating them. You'd rather we just slap them around and chastise them for not picking up a C++ and learning how to program. Elitist, indeed. And ultimately self destructive.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I'm pretty sure even Linus isn't that religious about this. I don't think your goal for Linux can be imposed on volunteers who might have other goals.
In the past, I'd make a concession at this point and say "it's a good goal anyway." Lots of people have that goal. But nowadays, I can't even concede that. I'm really thinking that Linux needs to extend its reach to power users and stop there. I don't think Linux should try to displace Microsoft. Instead, I think it should get comfortable being used by the 25% of the population that is fairly tech-savvy. Leave the other 75% alone. They come with too much baggage.
Well now this I agree with. I think the rudeness and discourtesy some developers show others is a big problem. I just don't think the solution is to be doormats. For better or worse, the Open Source model puts developers on par with end-users. This becomes collaborative, and both sides must cooperate. If one side is rude or demanding, the other has every right to walk away. If that means a project run by assholes ends up stuck in a niche of a niche and never gains market share, so be it. If that means a project gains huge market share but deliberately draws the line at 50% of the population and says "we're fine with the smart half, but we're not going to be able to accomodate the other half" then so be it.
As usual, I think there are courteous ways to say no (such as "I'm sorry, but that's a lot of development time and we have no one to spare") and there are rude ways (such as "build it yourself noob").
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I say, "What's wrong with that?"
Is there some inviolate law that says people have to program for others for free (as in "with no charge")? I hear Marx muttering from his grave, "...from the programmer to the end user...".
If you don't like what you get without charge, then either expend the effort to change it, or pay someone to do it for you. I don't expect doctors to treat me for free, or lawyers to represent me for free, so why is there this perception that those that provide software without charge should somehow be obliged to meet some arbitrary whim?
Granted, ease of use translates into popularity translates into greater support, and those that care about software popularity might make the effort to consider usability issues. Hint: that may not be the prime developer of a particular piece of software.
Linux was not created for your benefit or mine: it was created by Linus Torvalds for himself. Of course, others with similar interests shared and contributed to that effort, and the synergy is amazing. But the fact that it is useful to you or I is happy coincidence.
Elitist, indeed. And ultimately self destructive.
You know, I have a brother in law that is seriously into motorcycles. He goes on and on about minutae of bikes that I barely understand. Elitist? Perhaps. But, he does not require or expect me to share his interest or desires. And, I do not expect him to explain things to "my level". Why is it, then, that we expect open source and free software programmers to "owe" something to society? Ironic how free software, wrongly criticized for being "communist" suffers under accusers far more "red" than it's protagonists.
"Ultimately self destructive?" I suppose if a popularity contest or some measure of market share is the issue, the argument might hold a drop of water. But, that isn't the issue, and never was. If free software requires popularity, it is only because opponents of the philosophy behind it would seek to use the force of corporatist-purchased government law and force to extinguish it's fire. Frankly, with IBM and others "on side", I don't think we need to worry about that.
I am not a free software or open source zealot. I believe that the only way to produce mass-market user-interacting software is with the kind of market research that can only be funded by providers of proprietary software. That said, there are large underlying components of such software that could be leveraged in other areas and will soon be supplanted by free alternatives, commoditizing them at zero cost to end users. The line has been drawn between effective free operating systems and non-free applications and services. The question is how much will it move into the application space? My bet: "Not very much."
Free office suites and web browsers will exist, of course, but will generally play the "compatibilty catch up game" with their most popular non-free counterparts. They will be standards-complient and Microsoft-incompatible. Maddeningly, standard non-conforming software will continue it's popular ride. The market, after all, is not made up of a majority that can evaluate the benefits of the free vs. non-free alternatives: they get their decision-making input from TV. I've yet to see a television ad for Apache (notwithstanding in the context of IBM hardware and support).
You could've hired me.
From the article:
The systemic, fundamental flaw with her analysis is that there is no united "open source" goal from which to be held back!
The assumption that all free and open source developers share the principal goal of supplanting or competing directly with more traditional software is just wrong.
For some projects, it may be true, but clearly not for others. Do the authors of ghostview want to supplant acrobat reader? I don't think so. Do the authors of the Gimp want to compete directly with photoshop? Perhaps.
Do Star Office and Open Office developers want to erode Microsoft's share of the office-suite world? You bet.
Do the mingw people want to compete with visual C++ (or whatever Microsoft's latest c++ compiler is called)? I don't think so.
In general, do you think GNU people want to compete with anybody? I don't. I think they just want to be free to create the kind of software they like.
It seems to me that there are a huge variety of goals out there, and in many cases, competing with commercial software is not one of them. In other cases it is. But in my opinion only newbies and idealists believe that free software should try to or will eventually take over the world and put closed software out of business.
What free sofware does is put pressure on commercial software. For example, I'm sure one of the reasons that Microsoft fixed the TCP/IP stack in its newer OS's is because the Linux and BSD stacks are so good. (In fact, I've heard people say that Microsoft just lifted the stack from some BSD variant. I don't know if that is true.) Microsoft also took a lot of heat for stability, once again due to the stability of various Unix-like OS's running on the same hardware. This has forced Microsoft to improve. Finally, now, Microsoft is taking tons of heat on security. We'll see how they react. (In my opinion, this already makes Linux and the BSD's a complete success. They forced Microsoft to compete!)
And of course, Linux is sort of like the blob. Microsoft tries to fight it off on some narrow front, but it just expands around that area and pushes in somewhere else. Whether it's servers, PDA's, the embedded market, or 64-bit systems, or gaming consoles, Linux is there, making life difficult for Microsoft, not out of malice, but just because it is what it is.
Anyway, just my $0.02.
MM
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