Examining Some Open Source Myths

Neil Gunton writes "I wrote an article distilling some thoughts on Open Source myths. Perhaps unusually, these are not myths propogated by the anti-OSS crowd, but rather dogma that is more frequently spouted by OSS proponents. It is not intended as an anti-OSS argument, but really more as observations and reactions to specific things people say without really thinking about it, such as 'You shouldn't complain about it if you don't want to put effort into providing a fix', 'OSS lets you get under the hood to fix problems', 'All software should be free', 'Scratching the personal itch', etc."

Comments

A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[etymxris]

On "All Software Should be Free"
Carpentry is a bad analogy. No one says that I should be able to take tables made by carpenters for free. However, the effects of idea creation are much more ephemeral. Or rather, they are much easier to duplicate than a well crafted table. This is exactly why analogies to "stealing" items in the real world do not carry over to the internet. I don't believe in copyright, any of it. But I still think things should have value. I just don't think that the government should grant monopolies on any idea. So, to go back to the analogy, I think you should be able to charge for what you make, be it software or tables. But I also think that the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own, and give it away or sell it or whatever. So comparing the internet to the real world we see that copyrights are just a legal entity, they are not real things, they do not exist outside of a goverment's promise to enforce them. So you can tables, CDs, and even bandwidth, but you can't steal information.

So, let's take this point and compare it with the previous point made concerning "scratching an itch". People in many professions get paid for their expertise. A plumber comes in, does his job, gets paid, and goes home. He doesn't make royalties on his work. He enjoys no monopoly on information, but of course, his job makes this unnecessary. But what we see from the case of the plumber is that people will still need software written, even if there are no monopolistic copyright protections when it is written. People will have "itches", and they will need to be scratched. And maybe they won't have the time to do it themselves. And so, others will be paid to scratch that itch. All of this takes place without any mention of copyright. It's not needed.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[MightyYar]

I agree with you that his point here is off. He's complaining because he can't make money doing what he loves. Yeah, well, welcome to LIFE! :)

Seriously, programmers are a commodity, because a lot of people like to program as a hobby. Don't expect to spend time working on an "interesting" or "general" application and expect to be compensated. If you found it interesting, so did another programmer.

He bemoans the 1980's, when you could expect to sell your work. I wonder, though, how much money all those shareware Tetris authors made!

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[Tony-A]

1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"

There is a confusion between free and cheap.
It is cheap and easy to have an opinion on cheap software. Not that it will do much good.
It can be very expensive to have an opinion (that anybody will listen to) on free software.

Assuming that much of the future of IT is in supply chain:
A chain with only two links is kinda silly.
A chain is as strong as its weakest link, which has the uncomfortable consequence that the most important links are the weakest links.
This forces some strange-looking economics. Old Red Hat is now expensive and new Fedora can't be bought.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[Trurl's Machine]

I don't believe in copyright, any of it. But I still think things should have value. I just don't think that the government should grant monopolies on any idea.

What's your opinion on karma-whoring trolls, who copy/paste someone else's posts hoping to get modded-up? Is it OK to you? After all, "you don't believe in copyright, any of it".

While noone denies that MPAA/RIAA goes too far these days, it's foolish to overreact the other way. If you abolish copyright, you also abolish Free Software (if there's no copyright, there's no GPL). I believe that an author should have right to his creation - I don't want to see my stuff signed by someone else. So I believe in copyright (some of it).

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[pjt33]

I don't believe in copyright, any of it. But I still think things should have value. I just don't think that the government should grant monopolies on any idea.

I could be misunderstanding you, but it seems that you misunderstand copyright. Copyright protects not an idea but an expression of an idea. Taking the kind of area where copyright originated: the idea of a series which tracks a wizard boy through school as he fights baddies has no doubt been expressed many times, but the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series is protected.

So, to go back to the analogy, I think you should be able to charge for what you make, be it software or tables. But I also think that the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own, and give it away or sell it or whatever.

To continue with the HP example, would Rowling have spent years writing and polishing the HP books if the first publisher she approached with the manuscript could rip it off and make all the profit? Maybe she would have written the first one or two, but seeing others getting fat on her work while she got nothing would have been a strong disincentive against finishing the series.

Application to software, then: if a company spends thousands or millions of $CURRENCY developing a product, and then the first person they sell it to can make as many copies as they want and sell them on for half the price, that person will make more profit per copy, because they didn't have the overheads, and will sell more copies to boot. The only way to avoid this is to sell it to that person for the price of developing, which means that there will only be incentive for a company to write software if it's in-house or built-to-order. There goes company innovation.

If when you say

the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own

you mean that they should be able to make a clean-room implementation and sell it, then that's fair. However, copyright protection doesn't prevent that, so it's not an argument against copyright.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[richie2000]

What's your opinion on karma-whoring trolls, who copy/paste someone else's posts hoping to get modded-up?

I think they should be mass-sued for copyright infringement, found guilty and thrown in jail.

Oh, or maybe they should simply be down-modded and hailed with derisive laughter?

Hm. A self-regulating, dynamic and free post market economy or a government-imposed regulatory system that's impossible to enforce? Decisions, decisions...

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[etymxris]

What's your opinion on karma-whoring trolls, who copy/paste someone else's posts hoping to get modded-up? Is it OK to you? After all, "you don't believe in copyright, any of it".

I don't believe in taking credit for other's work. But that's not a copyright issue. That's an issue of simple fraud.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[etymxris]

I typed out a long reply to this just now, but the browser crashed, so this reply will be a bit more brief.

Anyway, you see the need for people to sell software as a product. I do not. I only see it being sold as a service. Take an accountant. His abilities have value. Companies will pay him to tap into his abilities, because they need his financial skills. But what he produces is not a product, it is a service. The demand comes from the consumer. He does not wrap together a package of accounting and try to sell it. This is not how service works.

So, for software, it simply wouldn't make sense for a company to create a package and sell it, at least, not in the ways they do now (note counterexample of Linux distros). Rather, people would solicite their need for service. They would see that the kernel needs better foobar support, and offer to pay for this. The software does not exist before it is paid for. There is no need to market a product, because there isn't any. There is only a service.

As for more artistic endeavors, I see that as highly dysfunctional at present. Only a very small minority of aspiring writers, musicians, painters, etc break even on their work. Pursuing a career in one of these fields is almost like playing the lottery. Sure, some will get rich, but no rational person can see it as breaking even on average, because it doesn't. Regardless, I don't think people would suddenly stop producing art, music, and writing if there were no copyright. Maybe there wouldn't be a Harry Potter. I don't know. But I'm not crying over the possibility.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[Angstroman]

. ..it seems that you misunderstand copyright. Copyright protects not an idea but an expression of an idea...
...they should be able to make a clean-room implementation and sell it, then that's fair. However, copyright protection doesn't prevent that, so it's not an argument against copyright.

Using Rowling and Harry Potter as an example is interesting. While they may not be strictly "clean room" parallels, the works which have been attacked by Rowling's publisher are nonetheless original writing. They are being attacked because they copy some part of an idea, not because they copy text. So your notion of copyright may not be objectionable, but the actual instantiation we have now may be.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[TheLink]

"What's your opinion on karma-whoring trolls, who copy/paste someone else's posts hoping to get modded-up? Is it OK to you? After all, "you don't believe in copyright, any of it".

You are also overreacting the other way. There's a significant difference between copying and plagiarism. Plagiarism requires lying/untruthfulness and intent.

If someone reuses your words, but cites the original author, or even only says "someone else said this", that is not plagiarism, that is quoting. Whereas if someone intentionally copies material and misrepresents it as his/her original, that is plagiarism (or even fraud in some cases). If someone genuinely recreates the words, it's not plagiarism.

If all the popular quotations, phrases and words in the world were copyrighted then without fair/reasonable use clauses, only those with the most copyrights could speak.

I believe copyrights (even GPL) should last at most for 7 or so years. It should definitely not be 20 or more years. And whatever that has been freed to the public cannot be bound again.

As is, people who work to extend the coverage and duration of copyrights are the real thieves - for they actually remove/limit access to works (that would have otherwise become public property). Unlike theft, copying does not remove/limit access. Copying usually increases access.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[walt-sjc]

I'll takle an EASY target: "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"

He claims that it's hard and that nobody does it "in the real world." If that was really the case, the open source world we have today would not exist. Linux would not exist. BSD would not exist. Apache would not exist. PHP would not exist. MySQL would not exist. But they do. They are all thriving projects with thousands of contributors. Does EVERYONE contribute? No, but they don't need to. Not everyone HAS the skills, but not everyone needs to have the skills. That's why (if you were a corporation) you hire people with those skills to support the systems you use.

I know that I personally have fixed bugs in dozens of FOSS applications, and greatly exteneded functionality in dozens as well. It's not that you MUST get "under the hood and fix problems," it's that you CAN. This is not a myth. It's an indisputable fact. Any competent programmer can work with FOSS software. Not all programmers are competent. Not all people are programmers. These facts don't change the base fact.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[alphaque]

on "All Software Should be Free" neil gets it wrong because he confuses Open Source with Free Software. Only Free Software, as embodied in the GPL and the goals of the FSF, have a political goal of insisting that all software should be free for the common good. a majority of the other open source licenses do not make this assertion. Free Software is a subset of Open Source Software.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[squaretorus]

self-regulating
Pah! People cant self regulate everything. I HATE McDonalds. I want to be sure that when I walk past a McDonalds to go into a restaurant that I'm not missing out on some nice food. If copyright and its sublings werent respected I'd never know a genuine 'turd in a bun' McDonalds from what could be a very tasty emporium of quality nosh.

I could be in an airport book shop, pick up a copy of 'collected robot stories by the man azimov' and find its a pile of autotranslated japanese gay porn.

Copyright has its uses!

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[Oligonicella]

"I don't believe in copyright, any of it."

Really?

So someone who spends two or three years writing a novel or creating a great screenplay should simply sit back and say "Oh, well" when the first copy of the book/movie hits the streets and it is ripped-off with no further profits going to the author?

Bullshit. Copyright isn't only applicable to software.

Myopia at it's worst.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[Oligonicella]

"(note counterexample of Linux distros)"

One, count 'em, one counter-example destroys your argument.

"The software does not exist before it is paid for."

So you believe ALL software should be in-house, custom? So no home user should have any applications that do what is desired (because the app can't exist before the home user contracts the designer)?

More bull.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[cpt kangarooski]

The problem of course is that moral rights are an astoundingly stupid idea and should be abolished immediately. Copyrights ARE solely utilitarian, and moral rights interfere greatly with that.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[Azure Khan]

I disagree with this, and it comes right down to the misconception (is it?) of Open source as software by geeks FOR geeks, and damn the 'ignorant' masses (ie, those who fall under the 95th percentile for intelligence. You know, MOST of the population).

Feedback from non-OSS, non-programming individuals is the feedback you should be looking for MOST. These are the people who are going to tell you how you should evolve and develop your applications to maximize the user experience, and get your software recognized. In fact, these complaints should be handled with MORE interested than those who participate and support OSS, since most of those folks are OSS developers in their own right, and have different wants and needs in applications (what do you mean it doesn't have a CLI?!).

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[operagost]

Musicians and authors seemed to get by just fine before copyright.

Until the invention of the printing press, books were written painstakingly by hand. Writers did "fine" because their books could not be copied en masse. Most musicians actually did NOT do fine unless they had a solid sponsor, but I digress. The explosion of presses in the 17th century led to various legislation which initially did more to enable censorship by the government (especially in the British Isles) than protect the authors. The Statute of Anne ensured a reasonable period for the original author and publisher to enjoy the fruits of their labors. With the current high-speed communications technology, a work can be copied and distributed within hours. Even in the 17th and 18th centuries, it would have taken days or weeks to set a book.

I find it hard to believe that any but the most liberal and idealistic Slashdotter would believe that a short copyright period of a few years is unreasonable. What most rail against is the de facto perpetual copyrights that are achieved by legislators (especially in the US) pushing the copyright period whenever a large corporation's early works are about to become public domain. The public is still largely not aware of how this is happening and we would all do well to point out this obvious example of corruption rather than argue an absurd notion that artists will do "fine" without limited legal protection.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[killjoe]

No it's a confusion between a product you buy and a gift you receive. It's OK to complain about a product you buy, it's even OK to complain about a gift you get to your friends or familiy.

What is not OK is to publicly and loudly insult the gift giver in an attempt to humiliate him/her into giving you a better gift next time.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[DeadChobi]

One shouldnt suggest that simply because one is ignorant of OSS, that they shouldnt make suggestions. The author's major complaint with the attitude you're taking is that it discourages the end-user from having any input into the project you're creating. What that does is create a development model similar to that of Microsoft, who ignores end-user input when developing programs. The difference is that you're doing it for a different reason. Large companies have no need to fix problems and implement ideas in their software because their user base is so large that they can afford to lose customers. Not only that, the American capitalist system encourages corporations to produce only the minimal product required to make the largest profit possible, because the consumer accepts that they have no input into the process. For you, its simply because they cant fix it themselves, and dont have time to learn. OSS is different from closed-source software because everyone has input into the development process. Its more socialist and less of an "if you dont like it, TS" concept of a development model. If everyone who used OSS were required to know how to code, that would limit the size of the Open Source community, because not very many people know how to code. Furthermore, a lot of people have full-time jobs. Ignoring the people using the software, because they cant themselves make the software is a very bad policy if you want your user base to grow, because of one of the advantages of OSS: The user can switch to a different piece of software made by a different development group which does the same thing, and does it better. The development philosophy of "fix it yourself" doesnt work very well in a world where most people cant. Imagine what would happen if you had to fix it yourself every time your car broke down, and now imagine that your transmission needed to be replaced. Think about the average person having to do this. Or, a more appropriate analogy, but still following that of the car is that you dont like the color of your interior, but since the dealership/shop/mechanic you go to has adopted the model of "fix it yourself," you have to do all the leather sewing, molding of plastic, bolting, etc. that goes into making a new interior. *breathe*
(I'm damn sure that when I post this, a bunch of people will reply suggesting tons of corrections.)

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[Derekloffin]

I'm sorry, but that simply won't work. It completely destroys the capacity for a small company to take advantage of software because there is no longer a market for it.

I work in custom programming, and it isn't cheap for the customer, running quite easily into the 10k range per station, and frankly even at that price we're barely getting by. For your average consumer that is totally out of the park expense wise. For most small businesses that's a heck of a piece of change to fork out.

Eliminating the copyright on the software eliminates the mass market for software and totally destroys the ability for most consumers to afford it. It thus also carries with it the extreme decrease in the number of available products because companies can't expect to profit off mass market software anymore. Beyond that, there is only so much custom programming that can be done and can be afforded by the person or company desiring it and that can only sustain a small percentage software producers.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[abreauj]

If you abolish copyright, you also abolish Free Software (if there's no copyright, there's no GPL).

Nonsense. If there's no copyright, then there's no need for the GPL in the first place.

Free Software

[byolinux]

You seem to be making the misconception that "free software" means "gratis software" - this is incorrect.

"Free Software" refers to freedom, not price. I can sell my piece of free software at any price I like, whether you choose to buy it of course, is your own freedom.

For example; a business selling a database product may choose to release it as free software, and offer a gratis download, but offer a support/maintainance license for a fee. The software is still free, and the money from support /maintainance licenses can pay for things like offices, developers, food, water, bills, etc :)

Re:Free Software

[Registered Coward v2]

You seem to be making the misconception that "free software" means "gratis software" - this is incorrect.

"Free Software" refers to freedom, not price. I can sell my piece of free software at any price I like, whether you choose to buy it of course, is your own freedom.

I think he hit th enail on the head - how many times do you see someone looking for an OSS aka "free" counterpart to a CSS aka "cost money" product? They're looking for free as in no cost, not as in I can mod it. That perception will limit entry and ultimately stifle innovation. How many innovative, vs "let's copy the functionality of product X" OSs programs are out there?

For example; a business selling a database product may choose to release it as free software, and offer a gratis download, but offer a support/maintainance license for a fee. The software is still free, and the money from support /maintainance licenses can pay for things like offices, developers, food, water, bills, etc :)

Well, beyond the hurdle that someone has to develop OSS programs so you can sell maintenance is the cost of support issue.

If your selling support, It'll be cheaper to hire a bunch of cheap offshore techies to answer phones and provide support. Keep a few US based staff to do installs (supplement them with off shore progarmers on a limited entry basis) and you have a model for making money on maintenance.

Just don't plan on being a high paid US programmer when equally good talent is cheaper elsewhere.

It's not theat OSS is a bad model, but it is a bit self limiting.

Re:Free Software

[Chris Cannam]

"Free Software" refers to freedom, not price.

I really wish the author of the article has addressed this particular myth as well. Reading the article, I could already see legions of Slashdot comments dismissing the whole argument on the grounds that "Free Software refers to freedom".

The plain fact is that Free Software does indeed appear in practice to be always free in terms of price. (Or effectively so, in the case of e.g. Linux distributions with several thousand packages for USD50 or less -- rates at which there's no way an individual author can get any financial benefit.) The GPL even ensures that software will be close to free of price by mandating that anyone can get the source code and build it themselves for no more than a nominal distribution fee.

Indeed, look at your own example -- a business selling a database product may choose to release it as free software, and offer a gratis download. So their software is free of price. Your example doesn't even illustrate the point you're trying to make: why is that? Because there are no examples that do?

Regardless of the moral intention of the GPL (and I largely approve of it and use it for my own work), it's stupid to dismiss the fact that GPL software is almost always free of price simply by saying that in theory it need not be so. Unless you can show some application of your theory in the form of a workable way of charging profitably for the actual software (rather than services around the software), then your argument is perhaps interesting, perhaps relevant somewhere else -- but not relevant here.

Re:Free Software

[antiMStroll]

"How many innovative, vs "let's copy the functionality of product X" OSs programs are out there?"

That's not what you hear in this forum when the discussion turns to desktops, then OSS has too many which are too different. What software does Emacs copy? VIM, Apache, PHP, Webmin, etc, etc? I think you mistake the popularity of packages such as Gnome and KDE, which try to win Windows converts, for a general trend.

"All software should be free"

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy clearly doesn't understand the meaning of the word 'free.' He goes off about price and payments... that's not the kind of free we're talking about. Perhaps he should try to learn a little about a subject before presuming to lecture others on it.

Re:"All software should be free"

[Anonymous Coward]

But the point is that the ability to fix something doesn't apply for the average user. Most users do not WANT or NEED the ability to fix something or "look under the hood." This does not add any significant value to OSS in the terms of, for example, my parents. They want to be able to turn to tech support if tghey have a problem. If you want to compete with Microsoft you have to build something that appeals to the average end user, not to the average programmer.

Re:"All software should be free"

[Moraelin]

"If that guy has found difficult to "look under the hood", than he cannot understand other meaning of "free" - ability to fix, to improve etc. He is already deprived of this ability."

And if you can't understand that people have better things to do with their time than "look under the hood" for all the hundreds of packages on their system, then, well, you're lacking any understanding of what the end user wants.

The point is that I've looked under the hood of some projects, but typically _don't_ _want_ to. Other users actually less so.

A program is supposed to be a tool, and save me time. If on the average using a hypothetical word-processor cost me more time than using a typewriter, I'd use the typewriter. Code and technology in general is a _means_, not an end. It's that simple.

That _includes_ the hidden time costs of looking under the hood to fix bugs, or (my Linux favourite) track down and recompile half the libraries on the system just to get the damn thing compiled and running. If at every release I'm supposed to lose weeks just comparing code, merging my own changes, and fixing new problems in a hypothetical OSS word-processor, then that word-processor is _useless_. It's not only a worse proposition than going and buying MS Word, it's actually a worse proposition than going back to a low-tech typewriter.

Your average company is an even worse customer. They may look to Linux for the perceived cost advantages, but rest assured that they do _not_ want to pay a team that looks under the hood and fixes stuff. People are more expensive than Windows licenses. Paying a team to open the hood of all those packages and fix things is far more expensive than just getting a packaged closed solution from Microsoft, Sun, IBM, or whoever.

I.e., if the best business proposition you can come up with is "so shut the fsck up and fix it yourself", you've just lost the whole corporate market in one fell swoop. _And_ 99% of the home users.

Somewhat unrelated, IMHO all that list could be more or less seen as consequences of the one primordial problem: "scratching an itch." Too often the itch is "I wanna tinker with code", not "I want a program which does this and that just right." At which point the program's _only_ "advantage" is that someone else can tinker with it too.

Entirely too many OSS projects fall precisely into that category. They're there because someone had a vision of a better tool, but because they liked typing code. And the result shows it.

And retorts like "so fix it yourself" or "but it's good because you can look under the hood", are just symptoms of it. That person doesn't actually even start to understand the _user's_ itch.

For clarity...

[byolinux]

s/a business selling/a business producing

It's also worth noting that 'kicking the ass' of Windows is not the goal. The goal is freedom. If users have freedom, it doesn't matter whether their system is better or worse. That's not the issue.

Why is this on slashdot?

[Nicholas Evans]

Why is it this gets posted on slashdot? This sounds a hell of a lot more like his opinion to me. And look, I'm not getting posted on slashdot for saying Apache is cool.

Re:Why is this on slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Face it, this kind of OSS-bashing is what makes slashdot for many years for now. It's the price to pay for having a general-public (although geeky) oriented site, remember that it's amongs geek that you will find the most pro-MS fanboys.

If you don't like it, go make your own news site, and moderate it yourself.

Slashdot is nearly no more anti-OSS than the average population

If these are myths...

[gorim]

Then why do these form the backbone of the philosophy of nearly all FOSS hippy I have met ? Sorry, but these so-called myths *DO* represent the FOSS movement. You can't have the good without the bad. There is tons of good in FOSS, but these so-called myths are the baggage that comes with it. Or is the author trying to portray the FOSS movement as all good, and trying to sweep dirty laundry under the rug ?

Re:If these are myths...

[MPolo]

His point is that the statements in bold: "More choice is always better", "Open Source software is always better than closed source software", etc., are indeed representative of the FOSS movement, but that these statements are not true, and are therefore "myths" that the FOSS movement has lulled itself into actually believing.

Essentially, the author is a developer who fears that his livelihood will be completely lost to free software enthusiasts, as he will not be able to sell his software (though this isn't strictly true) and would be bored just selling support.

I would say that he is not categorically against Open Source, but tends toward a negative assessment. He claims that the article is intended to start discussion, so here we are, discussing.

Re:If these are myths...

[nomadic]

If these are myths... Then why do these form the backbone of the philosophy of nearly all FOSS hippy I have met ?

Uh...what? That doesn't make sense. You actually think someone can't use myth as the backbone of their philosophy? Some people base their whole existence around myths. Take a look at world history.

One of these is my personal favourite

[rebeka thomas]

"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"

This is not a problem. Not only is it not a problem, but it is at the core of getting great software out.

I'm sure many have heard how many photoshop users have complained about the GIMP, about its problems from their point of view, and often it's the same little dramas. the GUI, CMYK, whatever.

How long have we been hearing this argument now? 3 years? 4 years?.

Now imagine what a phenomenal product GIMP would be in the eyes of graphic artists who now use photoshop if only the people who had complained about it could be bothered to FIX what they see as problems. A few small years worth of effort in total, very little from each person who has seen something wrong, and the free tool would have surpassed the proprietary one years ago. Instead, all we get are more complaints.

Of course, the making of a noise may be the whole be all and end all to the complaining, with no intention of wanting a fix in the first place. Some people are like that, and that's just unfair.

Re:One of these is my personal favourite

[carolchi]

You also have to be ABLE to fix it. The average Photoshop user certainly does not have the skills, time or inclination.

Re:One of these is my personal favourite

[Lord Kano]

Problem is that the bulk of photoshop users are griphics professionals, not programmers. So even if they had the desire, most don't have the skill to fix such things.

Do you have any idea of how much work it would take for reliable and accurate CMYK separations in GIMP?

I use GIMP sometimes, and Photoshop sometimes. It all depends on what I'm doing. If it's a quick image rotation and I don't feel the need to open photoshop, I'll GIMP it. If it's something more in depth, I'll use Photoshop.

To each his own.

LK

Re:One of these is my personal favourite

[Anonymous Coward]

may i ask, for how long have you learned to code untill you could fix something like the font rendering in gimp? how long for it to be a really good job? how long would it have taken you if you had a full time job and had to do it in your spare time?

one of the reasons we got that far is that a very long time ago, when our knowledge became too complex to be learned completely by everybody, people began to specialise on certain aspects they could do best and enjoyed doing. an interface desogner complaining about the font rendering would help the GIMP more by designing a better GUI than sitting down and writing a buggy new font rendering, using an inefficient algorithm and a beginners programming book.

Re:One of these is my personal favourite

[steeviant]

"Now imagine what a phenomenal product GIMP would be in the eyes of graphic artists who now use photoshop if only the people who had complained about it could be bothered to FIX what they see as problems. A few small years worth of effort in total, very little from each person who has seen something wrong, and the free tool would have surpassed the proprietary one years ago. Instead, all we get are more complaints."

This is of course exactly the kind of idiocy the author of the article was complaining about. Imagine if, on the other hand the GIMP programmers weren't just working to scratch their own itch.

They'd accept user's complaints as a legitimate roadmap to the areas in which they are failing to satisfy their user base, and do something about it, and respond positively by addressing the complaint personally, or as a team by attempting to entice someone with the neccessary skills to do the fixing.

Imagine what a phenomenal product GIMP would be if the authors were prepared to attempt to resolve all complaints by managing users complaints as they would a technical issue.

Just a few years of attempting to address all complaints, not just scratching the itch of the core programming team, and the free tool would surpass the proprietary one, by being responsive to the user rather than bound by cost/benefit analysis like commercial software vendors.

Of course, this assumes that the users complaints are actually legitimate and substantive complaints and not just assinine and meaningless twaddle, which to me is no better or worse than you seemingly assuming that all users are coders whose work is of a suitable standard that it would be accepted by a mature open source project. :)

This article is just slashdot troll-fodder

[Tony Hoyle]

The idea that OSS is easy to get under the hood does not mean that every single user should (or even could) fix it - that's just a total strawman argument. There are enough programmers out there that the moderately popular projects will get input from outside and they *are* better as a result. 95% of project development comes from 'internal' development, but that extra 5% is sometimes crucial.

Plus, it opens the opportunity for a business to hire someone to fix it/make it work as you want. There is no such opportunity with closed-source software.

Someone else has mentioned the free vs gratis confusion. The whole article seems to have been written to wind up the slashdot crowd... I bet it's succeeded too.

Yeah whatever.

[ikekrull]

You can keep saying it's unrealistic to expect users to help fix problems with OSS software, but the fact is that only people who do put in the effort make any difference.

The only people who can effect changes are people who do code, who don't accept this defeatist version of 'reality'. If everyone simply accepted it was unrealistic to be able to personally contribute to anything, well, this world would be a much worse place.

What is 'realistic' to this guy is just not relevant to OSS development. Thats what makes OSS different, and special.

No, it's not 'realistic', but its happening, and it's happening regardless of how 'realistic' you think it is.

We generalize too much

[Mostly a lurker]

I think one problem with discussing open source software is we often pretend everyone involved has the same objectives. The scratching a personal itch comment is a case in point. Sure, for some developers, that is all it is. For others, the motivation might be quite different. Some projects are receiving donations with the understanding that the key developers will produce specific features; some developers want to showcase their skills; and so on.

Rather than talking about OSS as a whole, we need to try (as far as possible) to discuss the motives of individuals or the objectives of specific projects.

Re:We generalize too much

[sploxx]

Yes, and the author of the article does that, too. It's more a personal opinion than a careful dissection of FLOSS myths. But it's still nice to read.

Astroturfing or another troll ?

[ookaze]

I was betting from the excerpt, that the article was not well done, even very poorly done.
It's worse than that, it is pretty stupid too.
Well, taking the myths one by one :
1 : Red Herring. People who receive this treatment are generally whining or complaining. That's a way to shrug them off, because developers have no time to waste with such people. People who want to help post on bugzilla, explain to the author, tell him about the problem, without feeling compelled to say that the product "sucks".

2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)

3 : classic misunderstandig. We're talking about freedom here, not gratis. Stupid really, as all he says is then offtopic.

4 : I've never heard this one. Clearly, nobody sane would state that. Perhaps he forgot the word "often" in the sentence.

5 : Nobody said scratching personal itch was a good reason, that's just a fact. So where is the myth ?

6 : Even if people choose for you, more choice is always better (think monopoly). Even more stupid. Having more choice doesn't prevent you from having a choice pre selected for you. The other way around does not work.

7 : Conclusion : worthless article ...

Re:Astroturfing or another troll ?

[Cereal Box]

2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)

Er, no. The point he was making was that just because you "can" get under the hood of free software doesn't mean that you can really do anything worthwhile.

For instance, if I find a bug in some massive application like Eclipse, sure I can get the source and "get under the hood", but for all intents and purposes I really can't because the source tree is so huge and complicated that I have about as good an understanding how the program works with the source as I do without it.

So realistically, unless the source code is very simple and the problem to fix is a trivial one, just having the source doesn't really help you very much unless you intend on devoting a large amount of time to fixing the program.

Having more choice doesn't prevent you from having a choice pre selected for you.

You sure wouldn't know it reading Slashdot! It seems like the prevailing attitude among the free software zealots here is that the worst possible thing that could happen is to get a Linux CD with only one of every kind of application on it.

Re:Astroturfing or another troll ?

[grumbel]

1. If developers have no time to waste, they should simply ignore them, instead of starting flamewars or simply honestly state that they lack the time to implement this or that feature. Beside that, many people who are 'whining' are often criticising important failures of a project, sure they may have not used the perfectly gentle right words, but that doesn't make them less right.

2. He is arguing from a practical point of view, not from a theoretical. For most people going under the hood of Open Source software is as realistic as climbing the Mount Everest, sure they could do it, but they neigher have the knowledge or the time to actually do it.

3. Again he is talking from a practical point of view, not a theoretical one. Sure you can sell Open Source software, but how many people are actually doing it, especially if you leave the 'just boundle up a bunch of OSS written by other people' aka distros people? Actually very very few compared to the ones writing them. And even of those who make a bit of money with it, how many make actually enough money to make a living from it?

4. Well, people are often overestimating the quality of a OSS product, but well, that happens more out of the fan boy camp, than out of the developer camp. Just count how many times you have heard that Gimp is a Photoshop killer, while in reality its far far behind Photoshop.

5. Well, maybe no myth there, it just states that 'scratch an itch' doesn't really lead to any software that end-users are interested in.

6. More choice is NOT always good. Are you happy that there are so many fileformats and everything is incompatible with each other? Wouldn't a bit less choice and more standards actually be a good thing? How about one good and polished configuration tool for linux that works, instead of dozens of hacks from the distro makers that all more or less don't work?

A bit choice isn't bad, sure, but in the linux world it quite often turns out that instead of one working tool, you get half a dozens of unfinished not much working once. Just having 'More' isn't better, quality of the software itself matters.

7. Far from it, it states pretty well how Open Source looks from a practical point of view, not from a theoretical one.

Re:Astroturfing or another troll ?

[plierhead]

No offense and in the nicest possible way but you seem the classic open source bigot who this guy was addressing; you display an intensely self-obsessed whining and an inability to view the world from anything but your own tiny perspective.

"People who receive this treatment are generally whining or complaining. That's a way to shrug them off, because developers have no time to waste with such people. ".

In a nutshell, you gave an example of the very point the author was making. When developers don't care about a user's complaints, then they are no longer aiming at building something of usefulness to others but instead are scratching their own itch. I know it burns when people complain about your creations. Why, they're as good as challening you as a person aren't they! Get over it pal. I'm sure you're a magnificently gifted contributor to your own itch, but are you creating things for other people? A resounding NO based on your response.

Re:Astroturfing or another troll ?

[ctr2sprt]

1 : Red Herring. People who receive this treatment are generally whining or complaining. That's a way to shrug them off, because developers have no time to waste with such people. People who want to help post on bugzilla, explain to the author, tell him about the problem, without feeling compelled to say that the product "sucks".

That's certainly the case sometimes, but not always. Several times I've gotten the "You want it, you write it" reply when requesting new features, like supporting a database other than MySQL. If the developers would reply "I just don't have time to add this feature, I have to focus on supporting the stuff most people have or prefer," that's fine. I understand that many people are doing these projects in their free time. But many developers, in my experience, get extremely huffy when you suggest that something could be done better a different way. They take it as a personal attack. Then usually they get on their high horses about "You wouldn't have anything if not for me, and you'll get what features I want and you'll damn well like it."

It's hardly unique to the OSS world, as it's a human failing. I think it's mainly that, in the OSS world, you have more direct access to the actual developers, and because they write their programs for free they tend to identify more with them. So any complaint about the program is interpreted, by the developer in this case, as an attack on the developer himself. Probably Bill Gates feels the same way when we talk shit about Windows (or Microsoft), believe it or not. I don't think anyone doubts he has a big emotional attachment to his company and its flagship products.

2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)

He doesn't say that it doesn't allow you. He says that, in practice, most projects are sufficiently complex that most people are unable to. There's always a big startup cost involved in learning a new program. The bigger the program, the biggest the cost. While compartmentalization using libraries in such will help reduce this, if you don't know the libraries either, you're still looking at a big expenditure of time. And most of us have jobs and other priorities.

So it's not that you can't dig in and modify the code. It's that 99.995% of Linux users lack either the ability or time to do so. The "You can modify the source, so it's better" argument isn't wrong; it's just misleading.

3 : classic misunderstandig. We're talking about freedom here, not gratis. Stupid really, as all he says is then offtopic.

No, the misunderstanding is on your end. He explicitly mentions the classic example of how to make money off free (as in speech) software: services. He also points out, quite correctly, that there's no way for an individual or small group to make any money off this. If you and a buddy write some great app, how on earth are you going to make money off it? A tiny company hasn't got the resources to provide "services" the way IBM or RedHat can.

I mean, think of all those shareware games that the Mac people keep trotting out as examples that gaming on their platform doesn't suck. Those people wouldn't be able to make those games if they were open source. The market for services is too small, and even if there were one, the developers wouldn't have the manpower to provide it.

4 : I've never heard this one. Clearly, nobody sane would state that. Perhaps he forgot the word "often" in the sentence.

He's discussing myths, after all. If he said "often," then it wouldn't be a myth.

On #5, we agree.

6 : Even if people choose for you, more choice is always better (think monopoly). Even more stupid. Having more choice doesn't preven

Open Source User = Cares About Software

[pandrijeczko]

The OSS methodology does not need such rigid definition or clarification.

The only reason to run OSS software is because you care about the software that you run and are expected to use on a day-to-day basis. This is for the following reasons:

1. You don't want to be locked into a particular vendor's proprietary protocols, data formats, etc.

2. You want full control of your system. Why should you waste system overhead running a GUI, for example, on a system you just need to be a web server? You get that level of choice with OSS.

3. You want to feel part of a community. Unlike commercial software, you cannot expect the software programmer to bring what you want straight to you in a format you want - it just doesn't work that way because there is no marketing of OSS software. You have to be prepared to feed likes and dislikes back to the programmer or team who created the software.

4. You don't want to / can't pay for software. This is different to saying "All software should be free" and I'm all for voluntary donations to OSS projects. But it does mean that you can turn old hardware into a working usable system and in poorer countries, where people do not have the income to pay for software, this allows them to have exposure to the Internet, programming and gaining computer skills.

5. You don't support piracy. This follows on from 4. above but surely it's better for everyone to have people paying for commercial software and not using illegal copies while those that won't pay for software just use free software instead.

Open source version

[sql*kitten]

I find this assertion interesting:

But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free.

For a long time it was hard to get backing for software development on the PC because of the "Microsoft version" - the idea that if your idea was successful, MS would include it in the next version of Windows, undermining your market. Now, are we going to see that it's hard to get funding because someone will write a free version?

Whether or not they will, or whether it will be any good, isn't really relevant. I doubt that GIMP has hurt Photoshop's sales much, or MySQL is making a dent in Oracle. It's the perception in the mind of VCs and investors that matters.

Re:Open source version

[Semi-Lagrange]

But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free.

Here's the problem I have with this statement. From a market standpoint, if your work can so readily be replicated by a kid in his parents' basement, by definition it doesn't have very much economic value.
I think people need to realize that software as a product, a general application useful to a large number of people, has a relatively low economic value. Writing software in your parents' basement is orders of magnitude easier than producing your own hardware DVD player, and the same goes for most other consumer products.
Expecting to make money off software products is simply unrealistic. While most people who pay for Windows now don't realize this, I think the F/OSS movement will change that.

Well written article

[Omnifarious]

And I think it has many interesting points that are worth thinking about and/or taking to heart.

But, I have a critique of point 3 (All software should be free) and an observation about point 5 (Scratching the personal itch).

First, there is profitable Open Source software out there. The biggest example I can think of is LiveJournal. Sure, what LJ sells is premium features for their site, but they wouldn't have a thing to sell without their software, which they've wisely chosen to Open Source. LJ makes enough money to afford some pretty hefty server farms in back of it. There are many clone sites out there that use their software, and are free to make money in the same way, but none of them have come even close to putting LJ out of business yet. In fact, I think they've just strengthened LJs business.

So, software can be free, and still make money.

In point 5, Neil Gunton cogently observes in the last sentence "A commercial company, on the other hand, can afford to scratch the personal itches of its end-users, because the end-users are the ones paying the bills.". This very true, and I think it provides a useful illustration of a means by which an Open Source company can make money by directly selling software.

I think I ought to be able to go into a store and bu a copy of gimp. In fact, I think there are several Open Source packages which would lend themselves well to being sold seperately from distributions. This would do a lot to raise the visibility of these packages from a consumer perspective.

I just answered a question by someone where they were wondering about Open Source packages for doing various things. I gave them a list of them. But every single one of those packages usually comes with a distribution. This person was totally unaware of this.

These packages need marketing and distribution seperately from the OS. That marketing and distribution would raise their profiles, and provide a valuable way for end-users to get involved in how a package is produced. Their money would pay for support. They could be introduced to the concept of Open Source and how to effectively contribute constructive criticism and development money for their pet features to Open Source projects. The distribution company could provide a focal point for this, and a project could put things up on its homepage about how well it was being served by various distribution companies.

This would both generate revenue for Open Source projects, adressing point 1. And it would provide direct consumer involvement that could drive feature development, addressing point 5.

If I ever make consumer oriented Open Source software, I intend to sell it on my webpage, and not provide it for free download. I will tell them that if they can't afford the download, they should get a copy from their friends. I will provide source with the download. If someone wants to grab my source and try to compete with me in selling it under a different name, they're welcome to try, but I'm fairly confident that I can continue to add value to this software that I originally wrote better than anybody else, and they will eventually decide to rejoin my project anyway.

Debunking the Myths from "Open Source Myths"

[mmurphy000]

I'm assuming the author posted his essay and pointed Slashdot to it in the interests of getting comments. Well, here are mine:

"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"

IMPE (In My Personal Experience), this statement is rarely the first thing out of the developers' mouths. It's mostly used when firing back at those who try demanding certain features be put into the projects. Anybody has the right to comment and criticize, and the open source developer community probably handles that as well as any audience does for that type of comment. However, nobody can demand things be done unless they're paying for it or they're doing it themselves.

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"

Does a casual user do this? Probably not. Does this mean that no user does this? Of course not. It's mostly a matter of how much import you put on the fix and getting it soon. And in terms of the complexity...that depends on the project. Like the essay author, I am "an experienced developer" and I've already helped fix bugs in rsnapshot (small Perl script) and as an experiment rewrote part of the TightVNC Java client to use as a Swing component instead of an applet (not huge, but not exactly simple, either.)

"All software should be free"

or more specifically:

One of the central tenets of the Open Source philosophy (as it seems to be understood by the average person, at any rate) is that all software should be free.

No, that's one of the central tenets of the Free Software movement, which is approximately a subset of the Open Source movement. And their concern is "free as in speech" more so than "free as in beer", which is more of a side effect. Yes, this philosophy, if carried to its practical conclusion, means no more shrinkwrapped commercial software. Just like the existence of Habitat for Humanity, if carried to its extreme, means no more business for home builders ("free as in siding"? ;-). But it doesn't eliminate the market for home improvement stores (e.g., Home Depot), as homeowners still have to "scratch their own itch" and fix things around the house. It therefore similarly does not get rid of the markets for lumber, bricks, shingles, nails, power tools, etc.

"Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"

Actually, I agree here -- anyone who says that literally is nuts. If you put "All else being equal" on the front, then the statement is fairly decent, but rarely is all else equal, meaning a project's open source nature is one of many features, each with their own weight in the eyes of the decision-maker.

"Scratching the personal itch"

The author admits that this is true in the first sentence of his argument. If it ain't a myth, don't list it as a myth -- it hurts the essay overall.

"More choice is always better"

Like with the proprietary "myth" above, as a literal statement, this probably isn't a great statement. With "all else being equal" on the front, it is. Certainly, the inverse -- less choice is always better -- or the contrapositive -- more choice is never better -- are even worse statements, so the "myth" ain't so bad in comparison. (and forgive me if I got my inverse and contrapositive mixed up, as it's been a long time since I covered that in middle school).

opensource

[chrisranjana.com]

Yes opensource is much better.

Re:My thoughts.

[hyphz]

I don't think you can compare programming with music and movies. Music and movies are both entertainment products and people's demand for them is generally fairly constant.

Programming, on the other hand, can be divided into two categories: games, and just about everything else. Games are entertainment products, and thus follow a similar pattern to music and movies, with the exception that they sell less because, being interactive, they offer a greater range of entertainment experience per product.

But applications are the really nasty area. Because there, almost all of the standard applications are already written, and even if the written ones aren't ideal, the network effect is so strong that they can't be toppled. Original applications are generally frozen out of the market to begin with.

So yes, he's right to say "software can't make money". Applications software indeed can't make money anymore - because 90% of the time, it's either competing against a rock-crushing market leader, or (worse) competing against something the consumer already got for free because it was bundled with their PC. In that situation, no price higher than zero can possibly survive.

Some myths are bigger than others...

[ewe2]

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
How is this a myth? Nothing prevents me from doing it, whether I want to is my choice. And those that do are always going to be in the minority.

"All software should be free"
Aaaagh. How many times do we have to reiterate it, not as in beer? Another "software is manufacture" argument.

"Scratching the personal itch"
So the desire to rule out leeching wasn't a valid itch in the case of bittorrent. Or the wish for a fast uncomplicated window manager made blackbox the choice of only programmers. My particular itch has nothing to do with programming. This might have made sense maybe five years ago, now it's laughably easy to shoot down.

"More choice is always better"
This is a bad way to put it. "A bunch of bad choices is worse than a few good ones" is a better argument, and has much better application to software.

This was lazily written and needed more thought before /. got hold of it. Bad move :)

Making closed source software can be too expensive

[systems]

if you need to make a piece of software, and can't work alone, because it's too much work for you, or because you don't everything about everything
taking your project online as a free project might help!
or if you can do it alone, taking is online might help improve it, more hands, eyes, legs, bugs, and everything you can imagine
another reason to make a software free, is increasing it's chance of adoption, so if more adoptions have more value to you, then maybe making your program free, is a good idea
moral is, there is a chance that making a sw project open source, is the only way to make use or money out of it
the internet, and the millions and millions of the net citizens, increases the chances that you will get what you want from makin a project free
more volunteers who share similar interests
cheap distribution
more adoption

so evaluate the situation, and choose
free or close
don't forget, that making closed source software, costs a lot, companies likes Redhat, mandrake, suse, would have never existed if the main software component they work on (linux-kernel) wasn't free, because at one point in their life, paying for the development and marketing and distribution for a new OS was way bigger then their pocket.
so it can be very practical and economic to make a sotware free ...
Attracking the right volunteers, in my opinion, remains the make it or break it
so one should not set his hopes too high
maybe you will make a piece of code free, but no one will bother
or maybe the skilled volunteer poll will be satured, all the skilled ppl are busy and taken
but then of course, i am sure, many many many, closed source sw maker, bankrupt for less then that

gratis != free is just plain stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree
And gratis != free is just plain stupid.

If you distribute your sources to your first customer, he is able to redistribute them. And your product, suddenly, has become free.

I rather hate this literary form

[Jeremy Erwin]

Most of the time, a list of myths provides little more than an opportunity to trot out a consignment of straw men-- willful distortions of the opponent's arguments, to be hacked, burnt, and slashed at for the the audience's amusement.

Hmm... More of opinions than myths

[sonicattack]

Perhaps I misunderstood the title of the article - I think the use of the word "myths" is misleading, since almost none of the points brought up are verifiable, but merely the author's opinion.

Some examples:


Just my humble comments on an otherwise quite interesting read. :^) 2. "Open source lets you get under the hood and fix problems"
The idea seems to be that Open Source is better than closed source because you can "tinker" with the code. But how many people actually do this? Hardly anybody in real life. In reality, it's generally very, very difficult to fix real bugs in anything but the most trivial Open Source software. I know that I have rarely done it, and I am an experienced developer.

Not sure where this comes from - I never heard anyone recommend OSS on the basis that anyone can fire up their editor and happily fix bugs in any software in minutes, because it's Open Source.

The advantage that Open Source has over closed, proprietary source because of its "tinker friendliness" still holds true, irregardless of the author's conclusion that it is "very, very difficult" to fix problems in OSS. The source code is still available, right?. This means that it is at least possible for someone motivated enough to try and fix it. You just don't have that when the source code not is avaliable (legally).

Just because the percentage of users actually contributing their own patches is low, doesn't mean that the advantage of source code availability is reduced. To me this sounds a bit like "Oh, they say that this brand of car can be driven faster than the other brand, but since almost no-one is skilled enough to push the car to those speeds, it's a myth."


4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software" People rant on and on about how much MS Windows sucks, and it's true, it does in many respects. But it's also true that in many respects, Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements. It's widely recognized that the Linux desktop is still a work in progress playing catch-up to Microsoft, and people continually wage religious wars on each other's OSS projects.

Come on. I don't think I ever heard someone even on Slashdot seriously put forward the idea that Open Source "always is better, just because."

Not really sure where this argument is going. Shall I read it as "The idea that open source always is better is wrong, because some proprieraty alternatives do stuff better." Hmm. Again, only the most fundamentalist zealot would not know this.


6. "More choice is always better"
[...] For example, a new Linux user has to choose between all these different packages (e.g. which desktop) without knowing anything about either choice, or else just admit defeat and click "All", which results in a bloated system. Reducing the choices would reduce the bloat and clutter that seems to be in danger of overtaking the Linux of today - how many CD's are there now in the average distribution? [...]

This is a comment on distributions, and _not_ Open Source in general. Reducing the number of choices (or at least putting them under some "advanced options") in the most "user-friendly" distributions may be a good idea.

Author is confused

[arvindn]

Responses to the points:

"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"

Agree. (i.e, agree with the author's disagreement to this statement). However, the statement is generally only aimed at someone who simply flames developers without offering anything constructive, in which case its valid.

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems".

That statement is aimed at companies, not home users. Know why gimp is popular in hollywood, despite competing proprietary software having a lot more features? That's right, studios can (and do) pay dozens of programmers, and with gimp they get the source.

"All software should be free"

Hello? That's RMS's philosophy, and maybe the philosophy of the Free Software movement. The "open source" movement differs from RMS on precisely this point. Author's long rant about this is completely wasted, because it is a minority of FS/OSS proponents who believe that all software should be free.

"Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"

Find me 5 people who believe that.

"Scratching the personal itch"

Well, that's the explanation of how unpaid OSS gets written. Commercial OSS is a whole different thing. I don't think anyone confuses the two. The author assumes that people do, and then goes on to explain why they shouldn't. Duh.

"More choice is always better"

Yes and no. That's why we have distros. If you are a linux vendor, more choice is always better. The vendors pick and choose and put together a coherent product so that the end user needs to make one choice (which distro to use) and nothing more. They get a usable system right away. If the end user wants to choose, they can, that's why you have debian, gentoo etc.

Conclusion: these statements aren't myths at all, except in the author's mind, or have important caveats which the author ignores.

Freedom to Fix

[Brian Blessed]

The article is biased because it, seemingly deliberately, omits crucial parts of the discussion. For instance:
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"

The author says that the idea that OSS allows you to tinker with the source code is a "myth". He is totally missing the point; The freedom to fix the software is important, not because every user will be able to do so, but because they will all ultimately benefit from this access being available to the programmers that will submit patches.

- Brian.

Re:Huh? Who made that claim?

[zakezuke]

I'd agree strongly on this point. The idea that Linux is behind in the GUI department (sounds rather dirty, but hey) is false, in my opinion.

Copy & paste is something that seems non-standarized in the X world. There seem to be multiable clipboards none of which are compatable with each other. This is one aspect that makes Windows and the Mac more useable. Not that I'm trying to flame linux or anything, it's just one of many issues that are a direct result of having too many choices.

Someone got bored halfway through...

[Oddly_Drac]

"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"

Personally I've never heard this one, although I've fixed quite a few things, then submitted the necessary as it kills that one dead.

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems" - Maybe you'll poke around a bit in the code, and if it's trivial then you can fix it - but again, this really isn't something your average user is going to do.

Look! Over there, other side of the road, travelling in the other direction...it's the point...

The point of this 'myth' is you have the ability to. That's it. Whether you submit the patches or not, you can make any modifications that your little heart desires.

"All software should be free" - I write something independently, then there is basically not a chance in hell of being able to sell it or make money directly from it.

There is money being made, but I think the point is that all software should be free in terms of usage rather than monetary cost. Frequent mistake, but a schoolboy error for someone with 20 years experience.

"As a developer myself, this prospect is profoundly depressing"

Why the hell should it? I'm currently developing like there's no tomorrow; people pay for my ability to make things work how they want them to, they don't care about which tools I use. You don't stand over your plumber's shoulder and demand he uses branded Stilsons; you'd get one in the mouth after a short amount of time.

"Yeah, I know, some will say "Go ahead and try, it's a free world". But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free."

Unlike the corporation that could also do the same thing and just slightly undercut you? Grow up. Competition means going out there and seeing if your product/service will fly, and the capitalist ideal means that you could find yourself competing against an eight-year old wunderkind. On a long enough timescale kids will always kick your ass.

"the Linux desktop"

'The'?

"Some of these benefits include having a more focused direction for the team, given the fact that there is (usually) just one manager and team leader, firmer schedules and deadlines, tighter management, profit incentives, salaries and bonus motivations. While this can also be true for open source projects, the "design by committee" that goes on with community projects often results in a more bloated and less focused product that tries to be all things to all people."

Have you worked in a closed source environment? For one thing the manager generally doesn't code, the bonus motivations are usually in place to sweeten the complete lack of innovation and flair that are endemic to a heavily specified job and the deadlines usually slide for whatever reason. OTOH, you'll find that most of the _successful_ OSS projects actively try to cut down on the 'committee' element to the extent where someone usually throws their toys on the floor. Same shit, just slightly more transparent and vocal when it happens.

"A commercial company, on the other hand, can afford to scratch the personal itches of its end-users"

If it listens. Experience has shown that frequently features are thought of as more important than fixing problems, which has led to the current bloat cycle that usually results in the various companies talking about thin-clients...until they bloat the client again.

"Some people will inevitably condemn me for putting down Open Source"

Personally I'm disappointed that you appear to have such a narrow viewpoint. Your major concerns appear to be your own inertia, a couchlock attitude when faced with the idea that you can no longer simply code a product and leave it, that you may be faced with competition and that convienience should be paramount

Back from icy age ?

[hoppy]

I can understand why the larger software companies are getting very twitchy about Open Source - after all, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and so on are rapidly becoming mature enough to be real competitors to the major software vendors.

Rapidely becoming mature ..... So rapidely they are here and you did not see it ?

Give the man credit.

[levell]

I thought the article was well thought out and the numerous people who are accusing him of confusing free as in beer and free as in libre are being unfair. The guy clear understands OSS, but if your software is libre then those you distribute it to can redistribute - meaning that you can't charge very much if anything for the code itself.

Of course you can charge for support etc. but the article explicitly discussed that. It annoys me (as someone who is considering a career as a developer) that people seem to be deliberately misconstruing what the man wrote.

The Myth of "Selling Support"

[iiioxx]

I've seen that idea recited for years now. Make Free Software, give it away, and make money by selling support. Well, this sounds great if you are developing software for the corporate enterprise, which is the predominant purchaser of support services. Most corporate IT groups won't even consider a particular software package UNLESS they can buy a support contract for it.

But what if you are a developer of desktop software, designed for home users or small business? By and large, those users don't buy support services. More importantly, if you are developing desktop software such as an organizer or an email program, it should be designed well enough that it doesn't require support.

How many home users would use a particular program that was free to download, but required paid support services because it was such a bitch to use and maintain?

The "Free Software, Paid Support" model simply breaks down at the desktop level. And as long as there is no profit incentive for developing Free desktop software, you will see that software continue to be developed by hobbyists in their spare time. And this certainly won't further the cause of Desktop Linux.

Re:Thankfully!

[bunratty]

When I've seen people shout "Well, why don't you contribute to it then?", usually the person being shouted at was just shouting "This feature must be implemented NOW!" Don't be surprised to be treated as part of the development team if you show up and act like the boss.

Re:Huh? Who made that claim?

[Madcat123]

Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements.

That's news to me. I always regarded Windows to be ahead until w2k, and then the Linux apps quickly got their shit together. Since, they are more or less equal.

Occasionally, I like to try to understand how average user thinks and interacts with software, in order to better understand the users' needs and thus write better software.

During these tests, I attempted to interact with the system using average joe tools - mouse (as we all know, users are afraid of keyboard). The results were interesting, but not surprising. On MS Windows, you can interact with the system using only mouse and get your things done. As much as ppl hate Windows Explorer, it IS usable and it is possible to get everything done with it. Same applies to the rest of Microsoft/Windows-based software.

Second test I did was using Konqueror in KDE. The sidebars are nice, finally they have added "drives", media automounting etc to default settings. However, it all was fine until I attempted to download and install a piece of software using it. Hell, I couldn't even get it unpacked - Ark (or whatever was the packers name) is really slow and not usable (compared to, say, WinRAR).

As the article says, OSS is written by scratching the developers itch, NOT the users itch. The entire Linux world shows this - its a developers desktop.

If you still have doubts, try to use your linux desktop for a few days WITHOUT opening up a console window ever. Be sure to see if you can get software installed, updates downloaded, media played and whatever else you do. Just for the record - I tried it, and I found it impossible. But remember - average Joe does not type 400 chars/minute - he does 50-100, and he's afraid of mouse (and keyboard, for that matter).

Madcat.

Not so- more insinuous than that

[Srin Tuar]

but the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series is protected.

This is not true: try to make a piece of fan art than builds on the characters established in that series and will will be found in violation of copyright.

The definition of "derivitive work" is vague and allows copyright to be very stifling.

Application to software, then: if a company spends thousands or millions of $CURRENCY developing a product, and then the first person they sell it to can make as many copies as they want and sell them on for half the price, that person will make more profit per copy, because they didn't have the overheads, and will sell more copies to boot. The only way to avoid this is to sell it to that person for the price of developing, which means that there will only be incentive for a company to write software if it's in-house or built-to-order. There goes company innovation.

Most software IS already made this way. Unless you are talking about Microsoft's version of "innovation", nothing of significance would be lost.

Re:Not so- more insinuous than that

[Srin Tuar]

"...builds on the characters established in that series..."

"the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series"

What part of that connection are you failing to understand?

All work is derivative at some level Oligonicella. Do you think rowling made up goblins, trolls, wizards, witches, wands, flying brooms, England, and everything thing else in her books? Clearly not, I'm willing to bet she has an extensive list of inspiritaions.

Where you draw the line between derivitive work (changing one word in a book) and inspiration (an original story in the world of harry potter) is ARBITRARY. And thats exactly the point.

it's not a table, but.....

[zogger]

....there's a good work out there called "I, Pencil" which addresses the current real world effort needed to manufacture another (mostly) simple wooden product. And this was written in 1958, it's even more complex now with the interactions.

The bottom line is it takes a lot more than one persons efforts usually to get to a wooden table.

Here is a reference to the essay, it's quite long so just the url:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.ht ml

The trends for software for the next ten years are for programming tools to get better, to the point virtually anyone may write their own programs easily. Right now it is commonly taught and used even in the less developed nations and societies, it is not the arcane science limited to a few thousand people it was when mass adoption of computers was just getting started 40 years or so ago. The business will be forced to change as it's quality gets greater combined with ease of creation. That means it will be worth-less. Not "worthless", but worth-less. Just like the references to copied art forms, when the only way to get an art form was to create or purchase the only copy in existence, it was worth a lot more, as it has become easier to re-create that effort, it naturally follows it is worth-less, all the way to the point now that copies of audio and visual "art" can be created for under a penny in actual cost and at minimal effort. The original creation of the work will have to be priced accordingly as well, as more people can "do it" compared to years past. The businesses of "art" and "software writing art" will eventually have to adjust to that reality. They can postpone the diminishing of "cost" to the consumer only with legislation, but only temporarily, societal changes will eventually force recognition of reality.

Hard to do + Hard to copy = limited over all use or enjoyment, limited to a select few, very expensive, your base paradigm.

Hard to do + Easy to copy = Greatly expanded use to members of society, more universal enjoyment, costs start dropping, distinction between originators and users starts to merge, beginning of the paradigm shift

Easy to do + Easy to copy = The paradigm shift completes to a new one, costs negligible, universal enjoyment and use, society must change, including their "laws", or stagnate

In my way of looking at it, we are almost exactly at the tipping over point between step 2 and 3.

Good Point Re: Copyright

[reallocate]

Most of the anti-copyright posters here always roll out the candard that they don't "believe" that people should be granted a monopoly of ideas. By presenting this issue as one of personal belief, they try to transform any discussion of it into an attack on their own personal beliefs (as if we are not allowed to do that.)

Ideas are noncorporeal things that cannot be possessed. If something cannot be possessed, it obviously cannot be monopolized. To use a very simplistic example: "2 + 2 = 4" is an idea. Everyone in the world can hold that idea simultaneously, yet no one can possess it. IT cannot be copywritten. A piece of paper printed with symbols understood to read "2 + 2 = 4" is not an idea. It is a symbolic representation of an idea created at a specific point in time. The person who created it owns it and retains absolute rights to it (a monopoly, if you will) until that person decides to transfer some of those rights. Copyright is the legal framework that protects that right in balance with the larger needs of the oublic.

An argument that attempts to make the case that the creator of a work does not own it has to make that case for all works, not just things that can be copywritten.

In truth, most anti-copyright rants here are simply windowdressing used by unprincipled people who want free stuff.

Re:Good Point Re: Copyright

[reallocate]

A written representation of a formula or an algorith m is not an idea.

Re:Huh? Who made that claim?

[LordKaT]

I think the problem is that you, me, and most other tech savvy people want Linux on the Desktop; but, not just ours - everyones.

In order to do this, Linux distributions need to be dumbed down. I'm sorry, but if we want Desktop supremacy too, we need to make a distro that assumes the end-user is a complete moron when it comes to computers. Why? Because the average user thinks of the computer as an appliance. This is never going to change, no matter how hard you will it.

As much as you or I love to tinker with the technology behind it, the average Joe doesn't have the time, the will, or sometimes the brains to sit down and figure out what damned conf file needs to be edited in /etc/, or what obscure net driver he needs for his internal VIA network adapter. He also doesn't want to worry about his IP address, subnet mask, DNS servers and his gateway ("Gateway? Isn't that a computer brand?"). And, he sure as hell doesn't want to put up with attempting to install Linux drivers for his cool graphics card, only to have to find the X config file and change something.

Speaking of the X-conf and dumbing things down: Windows automatically detects, and uses, the scroll wheel. To this day, I have a difficult time setting up my damn window manager to recognize the scroll wheel. A small thing, yes, but I have to admit, Windows does a wonderful job of just "making it work."

As far as out of the box useability, I have yet to see a distro that hands down beats Windows.

So, I guess what I'm saying is: I agree with the article on this one, because the article is, from my perspective, not geared twards you, or me - the tech savvy system administrators - it's geared twards arguments from the average user - the guy who isn't going to run Apache, or MySQLd, or write bash scripts, or setup his computer as a firewall, or buy a new computer to run MacOS X.

For the average user, Windows still kicks Linuxs (Linux's? Linuxii?) ass, because it does the hand holding that the Distros treat worse than the devil.

under the hood

[M. Baranczak]

He claims that it's hard and that nobody does it "in the real world."

No, he doesn't. Direct quote from the article: "But how many people actually do this? Hardly anybody in real life." There's a BIG difference between "nobody" and "hardly anybody".

I didn't think so

[Allen Zadr]

I didn't get the idea that he is complaining. I think there is a valid point there. Why is it that every successful Open Source project, that is also targeted to the End-User market (and not the server/developer market) is backed directly by a company with money to spare?

OpenOffice (Sun), Mozilla (Netscape/AOL). As the author pointed out... The Gnu Image Manipulation Project doesn't have the end-user market share (yet I would also point out that this "End-User" project is the result of 'developer', not end-user, tools).

Programmers are a commodity, good developers are not. For every 100 programmers, you'll find 1 developer that has a good idea. After hearing the idea, 95 of those programmers will say, oh, yeah - that sounds obvious (yet, they had not thought of it). That's the crux. You have 95 commodity programmers who are willing to give away 1 developers good idea, because - in hind sight - it seems obvious. Maybe a general or interesting application is actually a new idea. I'll admit that this isn't always the case, but this does happen. THAT is why copyright exists, the idea has value. ...There are underlying social reasons for this as well that I'll be happy to get into.

Further, I don't think it's bemoaning to point out that in the 80s (and much of the early 90s) the software industry was still open to the single developer, and also not hobbled by open source efforts. This was also before massive consolidation of the software industry. Seems to me, just a simple statement of fact.

Re:I didn't think so

[cluckshot]

Even more deeply into the issue, programers do not get royalties generally it is the marketing companies who do. While there are no royalties for those who actually produced the software, the marketeers get a lot. Until the proposal (with results) is made to allow programmers proper royalties (Similar to ASCAP etc) I would argue that any copyrights of the companies are about as honestly stolen as any other goods fenced by sneek thieves and pirates.

The other problem is what Bill Gates told his "friends" a few years back when he announced that they were stealing his codes. Unfortunately he was stealing theirs and those who came before. If we carry this business of royalties very deep we will find that we pay a lot and can do no business.

Re:I didn't think so

[phats garage]

The software industry in the 80's had far fewer programmers because computers affordable to individuals was pretty new back then. Now, almost every kid grows up with a computer, many have broadband, and the technically curious kids will pick up programming. What you have now is a glut of selftaught programmers and that will put pressure on the "crap little app" that used to try for $19.95 in the shareware market.

Still, I've seen software projects and websites that can put up a simple appeal for funds and depending on their sales pitch, could possibly pull in 4 and 5 digits during a single plea for funds. And theres still shareware out there.

The danger with articles like this is that it reinforces the trend to call OSS "communistic" and "against the American way" when in reality, the freedom to program for whatever renumeration you want should be the most important thing to protect, even if you want to give your work away.

Re:I didn't think so

[phats garage]

I didn't get that he was trying to label OSS "communistic", he was simply saying that not every argument you hear for OSS is a good argument, and was pointing out the flaws in the most common ones.

I didn't see him call it communistic either but certainly pushes in the same direction as those who do. I bet Microsoft would love to point to a programmer saying "open source reduced my money making opportunities," just to imagine one example.

Re:I didn't think so

[phats garage]

We can believe him. Unfortunately all his article brings are the downsides, and these are from the providers point of view, the software authors, and he frames it as some "mysterious outside force", when in fact its simply other software authors who instead see a benefit or a reason to do what they do, release free software.

So essentially what we have is the free software authors undercutting the shareware or paid software authors. So while he disguises his argument as "a problem caused by open source", in reality, he has just been undercut by competition.

Now of course, we could then follow with the argument of "dumping" as an unfair competitive strategy, but to prosecute this would be to eliminate the free distribution of software. I'm just not comfortable with that notion.

Just Replaces a Set of Overstatements with Another

[Noksagt]

The very title of the article shows that the author doesn't understand Open Source Software. Very few blanket statements will apply to all open source projects or developers. His blanket statements are no different.

"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
I've heard this, but it has been rare & is becoming more rare. In fact, I most often see it in conversations between two end users (and often on F/OSS for Windows). This can usually be seen as noise--in many cases the developers are quick to offer a much better reply, saying it is on the TODO, or offering short suggestions of how one might start to make a patch if they are so inclined. In other cases, complaints aren't expressed in the right forum--if this was the "last word," as the article's author states, it is often because no developers are able to read it. End users should be better educated how to voice their gripes & have something happen--search bugzilla (or a developer's mailing list) & if you seem to be the first one with the complaint, make it politely in what appears to be the correct forum for bug reports/feature requests!

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
Well-written ("maintainable" or, as ESR says, transparent and discoverable) and highly used Open Source Software almost always receive patches or plugins not written by the development team. The Linux Kernel Team might keep tight reigns on what they maintain, but there are plenty of kernel patches that find their way all the way into the vanilla kernel, or are at least popular enough to be found in non-vanilla kernels. Many, many, more can be applied by end users.

Diff/patch are proof to me that this really isn't a myth. You might not choose to fix or even look at someone else's code, but you usually can (and, importantly, others are likely to).

All software should be free
There's still a not-insignificant amount of contention on making more libre software & what that exactly means. See numerous licensing arguments of BSD vs. GPL, etc. As for making all software gratis, as the article implies, I don't really hear this too often. Most people in F/OSS are quick to point out that "Free" doesn't refer to "free beer" & will offer numerous F/OSS projects which are sold (a boxed linux distro, for example).

He doesn't really seem to understand the "Commoditization of Software." There are a few different types of applications & F/OSS has pursued most of them & certainly all of the popular ones. Sometimes development is unpaid. In other cases, commercial companies "who get it" or national labs/universities which receive public funding have done the authoring. The thing is that once that F/OSS alternative is out there, it will often develop into something people want to use & want to make better so that others will use it too.

Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software
Better in what way? No one really claims that GNU-CAD is yet at the level of commercial counterparts, but it is foolish to say it is impossible for them to get to that level. (I also disagree that Windows has a better GUI than *nix.) For popular projects, the development is usually always better--code gets fixed faster & the number of users often indicates that the "Return on Investment" is better enough that losing some things (compatibility with proprietary binaries often being the biggie) to be worth it.

Scratching the personal itch
The thing is that many developers are end-users as well. Evolution and Firefox are fine examples. It is also very likely that F/OSS will try to satisfy the end user needs--anyone can voice gripes about it. The thing is that many end users also happen to be developers. The other thing is that those who don't want to adopt F/OSS want a 1:1 replacement of the commercial software they've become locked-in to. Patents and some restrictive licenses ma

Fair and commonsense points

[Junks Jerzey]

Kinda frustrating to see people ripping these commonsense points apart one by one. Really, these are all obvious and valid points. If you're all bent out of shape about them, even to the point where you need to rip the author on Slashdot, then you might just be part of the problem. Open Source is a simple and clean concept, but it is very secondary to good application design. "OSS" is not any kind of magic pill, and it certainly isn't an end unto itself.

(And personally, while I'm here, the number one most important tenet of open source should be SIMPLICITY. No one can safely modify code that isn't beautifully clean and understandable.)

What it takes to fix a bug in open source

[Animats]

• 1. Discover bug.
  2. Document bug.
  3. Report bug on bug reporting system on SourceForge.
  4. Wait a few days.
  5. Explore messages on project message board. Discover that the developers don't read the bug reporting system. Find appropriate Yahoo group they actually do read. Repost bug.
  6. Wait a few days.
  7. Get reply on message board: "Have you tried this in the beta release?"
  8. Set up CVS to talk to SourceForge. Get sources. Try to build program. Discover dependencies on specific versions of other projects. Get them.
  9. Wash, rinse, repeat.
  10. Try original problem in latest source. Verify problem.
  11. Reply to "Have you tried this in the beta release" with "yes".
  12. Wait a few days.
  13. Nothing happens.
  14. Wait some more.
  15. Nothing happens.
  16. Dig into code. Find defect. Fix defect. Verify that bug is gone.
  17. Run regression tests. Discover that regression tests show regression test errors. Run regression tests on released version. See same regression test errors. Read CVS comments to discover that regression tests haven't been updated to match source.
  18. Report fix on message board.
  19. Wait a few days.
  20. Nothing happens.
  21. Write on message board asking for source check-in permission.
  22. Get message that a major rewrite of that section is underway and the developers don't want changes to the old code in that area right now.
  23. Point out that developers haven't done a check-in on that section of code in three years.
  24. Get check-in permission.
  25. Check in fix. Rebuild. Rerun regression tests. Update README. Put message on message board about fix.
  26. Receive bug report from other user who was relying on the broken behavior.

  This is why you don't fix bugs in the programs of others.

The profit motive.

[Godeke]

I think that there are inaccuracies on most of the statements made (not to the point that completely reverse the analysis, but the issues are more complex than they are being made) but point #3 is obviously the impetus behind Neil's questioning "Open Source Myths".

I have seen similar to this quite a bit: "I grew up in the 1980's assuming that I would one day be able to write some really cool software, then *SELL IT*, and make some real money for my trouble." I think that this is *not* a valid argument. While stating a personal opinion and emotional state quite clearly, one could say the same about the farmers who "expected to make a living on the farm" or factory workers who "expected to continue to make a living in the industry".

Efficiencies continue to increase in the world, displacing people from jobs, many times leaving them few good alternatives. Is this good? Surely it seems not to be for those displaced. Yet, few people today would want to be contrained by the living conditions of the early 1900's, or earlier. We live lives that the kings of old would have killed for, by standing on the broken backs of those displaced by efficiencies that were created by new technologies and methodologies. I myself would find it difficult to give up modern amenities while simultaneously understanding the concerns of outsourcing and open source. Hypocrite is one word for it, I guess. At the end of the day, I have decided that luxury trumps a living wage for my fellow man.

So how does this apply to OSS? Simply: we are outsourcing the development of potentially commercial work to *ourselves* and creating the infrastructure for software to be "worth less in dollars spent". If I build operating systems, web servers or databases, I'm pretty sure I would be feeling just like the farmers and factory workers of old: there is a pressure building that is not going to go away, which will sap the monetary reward for what I do.

Does this mean I am against OSS then? Surely not, for I realize that the end result of this change is software development is not the destruction of an industry, but the creation of a bedrock of new technologies and methodologies which will allow me to produce better and better solutions for my customers at lower and lower costs. I can't dream of writing the next "big word processor", but frankly that is an empty dream anyway with the established commercial vendors in place today. The only difference here with OSS is when a type of software reaches a certain threshold of maturity, commercial exploitation of that type of software becomes harder and harder as the OSS packages catch up.

The main difference with our industry is the *speed* at which the effects are felt: it took a generation to destroy the factory worker's job, it took several generations for the farms to be destroyed. We are seeing an industry created and destroyed in one lifetime. Myself, I'm glad I didn't get the opprotunity to get comfortable with the old model and had the chance to learn how to produce viable solutions for my customers using the new model. You see, for every dollar my clients don't spend on commercial operating systems, SQL servers, etc, there is a dollar available for me to apply honest work to solving the problems they are interested in having solved. Where OSS won't work, I'm more than willing to pay the commercial vendors for the parts and pieces I need: because in *those* cases they provided real value for my dollar.

Do not mistake useablity for learnability!

[bluGill]

Useability is not the same as learnability, except for the case of a kiosk where nobody uses it twice.

True useability goes beyond grandma using the machine the first time, to grandma emailing the grandkids daily (weekly or however often). True useability may even go so far as to time how long it takes to press each key, and re-arranging the keyboard to save 1/10th of a second. (AT&T did this once for their operators, a case where spending a couple days in training saves money in the long run once they know the new layout the saves the thousands of seconds per person per month)

Linux is very useable if you are a programmer. KDE is very useable if you use your computer daily. And if you have never used a computer before KDE/gnome is just as useable as windows. (each has its own quirks though) If you are an expert at windows linux and the desktops are not as useable at first, if you take the effort to learn them they are at least as useable, perhaps more so depending on what you want to do with them.

As an example: I ran spell check on this post and corrected 7 errors. (there may be more, but speelcheck didn't find them) This is much easier to do in KDE than in any other desktop I've used. However there is something else that you can do easily that I can't easily do in KDE.