Lessons Proprietary Software Can Teach Open Source

cdlu writes "Kris Shaffer at Newsforge argues that just because software is open source doesn't mean it should be unpopular. What lessons, he asks, can open source projects learn from popular proprietary software?" From the article: "In the absence of a monopoly, there are three traits that are likely to make an application popular: it is cool or attractive in some way, it provides easy entry, and it is addictive. Barring these things, most average users will stick with the status quo. In fact, many users never use a program on their computer that did not come pre-installed. However, by creating an attractive, easy to set up, addictive application, a developer can motivate the average user to break this barrier and try something new. And several such applications can generate strong popular interest in the open source movement in general."

Comments

Drug Analogy?

[ackthpt]

there are three traits that are likely to make an application popular: it is cool or attractive in some way, it provides easy entry, and it is addictive.

Ah. It makes sense now...

• MS Office Opium
• MS Office Morphine, to help you break your addiction to MS Office Opium
• MS Office Heroin, to help you break your addiction to MS Office Morphine

Clearly businesses do have alternatives, we just didn't know the code names.

next up: MS Office Crack, soon to be followed by Out-Of-Money and switching to Open Office to break the cycle.

Sounds more like video games, as they can be very addictive, but I don't ever recall lying awake at night, with the shakes, because it's been 36 hours since my last hit of Excel.

Easy entry, I'd assume means easy to access the application and use it, getting desired results with a minimum of fuss. I can't say this is exclusive to proprietary software, because some highly successful packages have very steep learning curves and can vary from version to version in ways which can be maddening. (I recently replaced a several step process for producing lists with a one-button application and the end-user was alarmed because the page count didn't match what they expected. Well, I added an extra item per page because I had space, guess I should have explained that one, eh? But it completely bypassed the need for Office Tools, which were a large source of frustration in a frequently run process.)

Reliability seems to be overrated, however, as I've seen any number of vendor packages blow up, and an IT manager simply say, "well let me know when you get it fixed" Even when it's a desktop app that several users may be using (and man, will they whine when they lose even a minutes work!)

Perhaps what proprietary software is best at is concealing easter eggs.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[kin_korn_karn]

Sounds more like video games, as they can be very addictive, but I don't ever recall lying awake at night, with the shakes, because it's been 36 hours since my last hit of Excel.

I don't recall ever being that addicted to a game. Hopefully this is just a metaphor...

Re:Drug Analogy?

[ackthpt]

I don't recall ever being that addicted to a game. Hopefully this is just a metaphor...

Man. I sure have. I'm not addicted anymore, I've pretty much got that out of my system.

Now I'm addicted to suffering and ride a bicycle to prove it.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[Kimos]

Evidently you've never played City of Heroes.
I'll never get those eight months back. It was so worth it though...

Re:Drug Analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

it is cool or attractive in some way, it provides easy entry, and it is addictive
...
Drug Analogy?

I was going to say "your girlfriend analogy", but hey, yours works just as well.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[ch-chuck]

Maybe a good code name for Open Office would be "Methodrone".

Re:Drug Analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently you've never played City of Heroes. I'll never get those eight months back. It was so worth it though...

Eight months, pfft, try mudding. I'll never have those 10 years back.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[XxtraLarGe]

I've never been that bad, but I do recall lying awake at night, unable to get to sleep because I was thinking about what strategy I should take up when I continue that game of Civilization 2 Gold I had been playing for 12 hours before...

Re:Drug Analogy?

[kin_korn_karn]

I play games a lot, but I've never lost sleep over not getting to play one. I've stayed up all night and not realized it on multiple occasions, though.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps the alternatives to MS Office just have to be superior, rather than 'me too' implimentations.

Nah, its just easier to say "Mikro$l07h iz teh M0N0P0LY, d00d!!!1111"

Re:Drug Analogy?

[pixelite]

Man, I've been addicted to gaming since ms pacman, man. When I first got my hands on my 2600 I played it for 72 hours straight. It eventually was retired when smoke was emmitted from the system. I've been getting my much needed fix every since. I have upgraded to new drugs over the years as the my mind grew a tolorence for the old ones. I went through the NES, SNES, and N64 easily. When I got a hold of a Playstation, all bets were off. It wasn't until I got a hold of this new derivitive drug called PC gaming that it completely destroyed my life.

I have since been through rehab several times until i finally kicked the habit. I have been sober almost 6 months now and I could not be happier. I wish I had cleaned up sooner, I lost my wife and my daughter to the habbit.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[TheViewFromTheGround]

Sounds more like video games, as they can be very addictive, but I don't ever recall lying awake at night, with the shakes, because it's been 36 hours since my last hit of Excel.

On the other hand, only software companies and drug dealers call their customers and clients users.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[chris_mahan]

Nice sig.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[biglig2]

You know what's really scary? When you fall asleep and find yourself playing the game in your dreams!

I've done that with Tetris, Bejewelled, Doom and Counter-Strike, so obviously a mark of quality.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[ackthpt]

You know what's really scary? When you fall asleep and find yourself playing the game in your dreams! I've done that with Tetris, Bejewelled, Doom and Counter-Strike, so obviously a mark of quality.

Been there, done that. The mind replays a lot of what has been recently burned into it. In college I remember one dream, after a marathon session of euchre, where I had all four jacks and a nine. I've been euchred on such in the past, so it was kind of a nightmare.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[Orgazmus]

More addictive, and takes 20+ years from your life? ;)

Re:Drug Analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or "shit".

Re:Drug Analogy?

[vsprintf]

You know what's really scary? When you fall asleep and find yourself playing the game in your dreams!

Did that once playing Tomb Raider. It wasn't exactly scary, but suddenly finding yourself with two pairs of, er, 45's was pretty strange.

Re:Drug Analogy?

[vsprintf]

On the other hand, only software companies and drug dealers call their customers and clients users.

Sounds like there's a joke about pushers, sysadmins, and lusers waiting there, but I'm not going to make it because I know that BOFH is watching me.

Too Funny

[airrage]

"..attractive in some way, it provides easy entry, and it is addictive."

Interesting turn of a phrase ...

Re:Too Funny

[kevinx]

Perhaps he was surfing porn at the same time he was writing this.

Re:Too Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the proverbial female?

Re:Too Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the proverbial female?

I have it on pretty good authority that females do actually exist.

Re:Too Funny

[kpat154]

Sweet, now all we need to do is develop an application that is attractive, easy to use, and addictive. Wow, why didn't we think of that before.

Re:Too Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, just your mama

Re:Too Funny

[biglig2]

And cinnamon. Everything is better with cinnamon.

Re:Too Funny

[drinkypoo]

Most females are the opposite of addictive. The more you have, the less you want.

Re:Too Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha funny.
Proverbial != mythological.
You and the moderator should buy a dictionary.

Lower the barrier to entry

[jarich]

Any doubts about that? Check out the latest wave of Linux distros and their adoption rates. The distros that have live CDs are thriving. See Knoppix and Ubuntu for examples.

Re:Lower the barrier to entry

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is a troll, but really, what use is gcc on a box with no network connectivity? "Oh gee, I need a word processor... time to fire up vim and write one! Good thing I've got gcc on here so I can compile it when I'm done!"

Re:Lower the barrier to entry

[digidave]

By default the CD is an apt repository, so unless there is a newer version found online it will use the CD (like when installing nfs, for instance).

And you can always use alien to convert an rpm to a deb if you need to install one of those.

GCC by default? How insecure! Hardened distros that are meant for use as a server never have it by default and for a desktop distro, what's the point? Apt has pretty much replaced compiling for me. I don't think I've used GCC once on Ubuntu, but I used to use it all the time on other distros.

Re:Lower the barrier to entry

[teknomage1]

The devs probably make Ubuntu for themselves as well as others. Since most developers need a compiler, well there you go. Linux also provides a great oportunity for folks to learn programming, and not having to install a compiler lowers that barrier to entry.

Re:Lower the barrier to entry

[tepples]

GCC by default? How insecure! Hardened distros that are meant for use as a server never have it by default and for a desktop distro, what's the point?

Then are you claiming that the Ubuntu distribution is not useful for programmers such as myself?

Re:Lower the barrier to entry

[It'sYerMam]

Perhaps because some people need it to compile their network drivers. (Yeah, that'd be me!) So without gcc, they have to find some other machine to download it, and go through all the rubbish of transferring it. No, I did not keep SUSE on my system for very long, especially when it refused to go above 800x600.
In addition, desktop does not necessarily rule out programmer. I code, and I use Fedora. Fedora has apt and yum. Incidentally, I can't use apt at the moment, because I installed a source version of xscreensaver, so its decided I need to uninstall things that depend on it...
Anyway, that wasn't relevant. In essence: GCC useful. It should be kept there for contingencies.

Re:Lower the barrier to entry

[ozmanjusri]

Then are you claiming that the Ubuntu distribution is not useful for programmers such as myself?

Yeah, afraid so. Cheer up though, programmers who can apt-get gcc will be fine. It's probably best to think of it as evolution in action. Those capable of apt-getting to a new environment will survive to pass on their memes. Others; well sadly...

Or it could just be useful

[Omkar]

During my freshman year, I've watched a huge number of college kids switch to FireFox because of peer recommendations. Some of them even get OpenOffice.org and Thunderbird. I OSS software, especially for Windows, will continue to grow in popularity on quality alone.

Wow!

[Otter]

In the absence of a monopoly, there are three traits that are likely to make an application popular: it is cool or attractive in some way, it provides easy entry, and it is addictive.

Gee, with insight like that it's hard to imagine how the LNUX stock price could be down 99.8% from its peak!

Re:Wow!

[rob_squared]

Another thing about that quote. It's also saying that with the presence of a monopoly, all those things are pointless anyway.

Yeah, Right

[menace3society]

In the absense of a monopoly, he says...

Killer App

[thesuperbigfrog]

It sounds like they are describing the characteristics of a Killer App--addictive, easy-to-use, and cool. I can think of a few OS programs that fall into this catergory, relative to the user's perception of "easy-to-use." For me, CLI is easy-to-use, so apps like mplayer or emacs are killer apps, though I'm not sure the general public would agree. . .

Re:Killer App

[Anonymous Coward]

emacs almost takes longer to load on my machine as the machine takes to boot. Which kind of makes sense i guess since it does everything.

Re:Killer App

[bahwi]

MPlayer rocks, nothing better than waiting for X to compile/install than watching a movie on AA output. =)

Re:Killer App

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

My personal favorite is watching the Ballmer Monkey Dance with libcaca output. Now with color! (mplayer -vo caca)

Get the job done.

[teiresias]

People will use whichever application that gets the job done or in the case of a game, provides the most fun. That's it. Most don't care whether it's propreitary or open source. Does it get my e-mail? Does it write my term paper for me? Does it allow me to kill robots? Yes. That's all I care about.

All the rest is just FUDD that programmers worry about. Your common user doesn't much care. If both IE and Firefox were on every computer we'd see people use the one that got the job done.

Re:Get the job done.

[Frumious Wombat]

If you have an app that writes term papers for you, how much effort would it be to extend it to write grant applications as well?

Re:Get the job done.

[ravind]

Get the job done, and done easily. Three words I can't emphasize enough "USER INTERFACE DESIGN".

As a programmer, and especially on a volunteer project, it's very easy to get caught up with creating an elegant algorithm and then writing your application around that. Unfortunately what might seem elegant from a programming point of view is often not intuitive from an end user's perspective and this is where many open source applications suffer.

Re:Get the job done.

[Rei]

And if it writes grant applications as well, how much harder would it be to extend it to let you kill robots?

Re:Get the job done.

[m50d]

I think you're wrong. People care a lot about looking good. If they can skin the program, so much the better. Look at winamp - it was no better than the alternatives at playing mp3s, but while it had skins and WMP didn't, it was huge.

Re:Get the job done.

[killjoe]

"If both IE and Firefox were on every computer we'd see people use the one that got the job done."

Too bad most people don't have that chance.

Re:Get the job done.

[Anonymous Coward]

So one program allows gets your email, writes your term paper, and allows you to kill robots?

I'm afraid I don't have any first born yet, but I'll put you at the top of the list if you give me a copy of it.

Re:Get the job done.

[socratesone]

Well, sometimes it's about doing a good job, sometimes it's all about marketing.

It's not the quality of coca-cola that gets people to pay an inflated price for it, it's the assault of sounds and images subconciously linking emotional bliss to it that make people want a coke.

Proprietary software relies on sales to survive, meaning marketing is a neccessity. You have to figure out how people work. How they buy. Why they install, etc, and they pay shiteloads of money to make sure they do so. The initial popularity of anything is due to its marketing strategy.

What FOSS needs is better marketing. Maybe there could be a new project: Open source marketing?

Re:Get the job done.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting something: WinAmp became popular back before the release of WMP6. It was already the big player when I was listening to my MP3s on a Windows 95 machine (early '98), and it had better support and features than most of the other players I tried at the time. (By better support, I mean that it would play MP3s that had been encoded oddly, when other players wouldn't.)

Now, why did I mention WMP6? That's because WMP6 was the first release of Windows Media Player to support MP3s. So, prior to Windows 98 SE you had to download something anyways. (It's an important point.)

Now, move along to Windows ME and WMP7: personally, I know plenty of Windows users who never downloaded the WMP7 update if they weren't running ME. Why? Buggy buggy buggy. (That, and it was considered a resource hog.)

(In both cases, as well: WinAmp was smaller than the WMP download. Back when most people were still on modems, that was an important point.)

So, what have we learnt here? 1) Momentum and status quo are important. (Which is why WinAmp lasted so long as the top player -- they rose to the top when you had to get a 3rd party program to play MP3s, and managed to ride that even once Windows supported it natively.) 2) So is stability. (If your player freezes my system solid, I'm not going to use it -- but that should be obvious.)

Besides, if flashy looks and skins were so important, Sonique would still be in development, and WinAmp would be dead. (For those who don't remember: Sonique boasted a fully modifiable interface back when WinAmp only allowed you to change the look, not the actual layout/shape of the player.)

/Personally, I prefered nad.

Re:Get the job done.

[learn fast]

and write good, complete, readable documentation. Can't stress that enough.

Re:Get the job done.

[sootman]

"All the rest is just FUDD that programmers worry about."

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and... what... more Doubt? :-)

Re:Get the job done.

[yotto]

"All the rest is just FUDD that programmers worry about."

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and... what... more Doubt? :-)

Hah! I was thinking the same thing. Also, are the programmers worring about Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt?

FUD, you keep using that acronym. I do not think it means what you think it means.
</inigo>

Re:Get the job done.

[NanoGator]

"Too bad most people don't have that chance."

Oh please. It doesn't need to be installed on their machines, it just needs to be known about.

Keep up the advertising, sheesh.

Re:Get the job done.

[l0b0]

Get the job done, and done easily. Three words I can't emphasize enough "USER INTERFACE DESIGN".

I don't know where I heard about this principle, but it's something I try to keep to when programming:

1. Start with the input and output which are the only ones which, if missing, will not make the user able to do his/her job at all
2. Make the input (buttons, text fields, menus) and output (results, error messages) as clear as possible
3. Get feedback from the user
4. Repeat

Point 2 is necessary, but really the only things needed are those which make the meaning of the input and output clearer, such as a green "OK" button.

Re:Get the job done.

[drinkypoo]

Look at winamp - it was no better than the alternatives at playing mp3s, but while it had skins and WMP didn't, it was huge.

I think you're wrong. Winamp WAS better than the alternatives at playing MP3s, especially because it is small, fast, extensible (and frequently extended, even back in the day) and takes little resources. Oh, and it's skinnable. That's a nice side benefit but the fact is that it was the best mp3 player around back in the day and it still is in most ways.

The primary competition for Winamp was sonique, which was VERY slow and crashy. The interface was extremely pretty (it supported shaped skins LONG before winamp did) but it was also extremely slow.

Re:Get the job done.

[imsabbel]

winamp was there FIRST.
I used winamp at a time when i still used the original frauenhofer encoder for dos. Back then it needed 50% cpu to play mp3s.
All the users just didnt see any need to change.

Re:Get the job done.

[keesh]

Why bother? The documentation does not get read. I know this from experience. The only solution is to make it so obvious that there is no need for docs.

Re:Get the job done.

[Anonymous Coward]

"and write good, complete, readable documentation. Can't stress that enough."

Generally speaking, isn't that the opposite of lowering the barriers to entry?

Not to say bad things about documentation, but if you need it to be good, complete and readable then you've just missed a massive market segment. It's the smaller market segment -- of people who will be taking your product to the next usage level or alternate usage model -- that need all of your documentation.

Get the works-so-easy product to the masses first, give the few who want to do more with it the documentation (or rather, strategy guide as it were) when you can.

Re:Get the job done.

[Feztaa]

No, he meant Elmer Fudd.

Re:Get the job done.

[Neoncow]

I doubt it.

Re:Get the job done.

[m50d]

I think you're wrong wrt sonique. The great thing about winamp was not only was it skinnable, it was easily skinnable. Anyone could take a photo of their girlfriend and run it through a program, I think there was even a web-based one, and get their winamp skin of the photo. That was the main reason (imo) winamp3 failed: by giving you more control of the player layout, they broke the most important part - easy skinning. Also, thanks to that very same ease winamp got more critical mass among skin developers. There were always lots of skins for winamp, more than any other players. Still are, I think.

Marketing and Religion.

[scorp1us]

The vast majority of closed source apps are sold, marketed. Partnering gets them on the desktop.

If we were talking about religions, closed source is Chrisianity, with missionaries, and wars and such.

Open source is Buhddism, where one must go and seek out enlightenment himself. There are no wars fought, to missionaries spreading the word. One adpots buhddism dur to principal, and not because someone else tried to sell it to me.

Appropriately, I think the world population of Christians vs Buhddists resembles that of closed-source vs open source. The same goes for adotion rates.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[jacksonj04]

Personally, I feel that OSS has plenty of missionaries. Sadly they're all the kind who beat on your door then wax lyrical about something you don't care about.

OSS needs the missionaries who can go and get people interested on what they find useful.

For example, Firefox. Don't go banging on about security vs. IE, and the fact it has no ActiveX, because they don't care. Show people tabbed browsing and they're hooked.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[foreverdisillusioned]

Open source or closed source--my guess is that as long as it has a spellchecker, you'll be happy.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the beginning

Feel free to do more research on your own.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is quite possibly the worst analogy I have ever seen in my life. You know absolutely nothing about Christianity or Buddhism and you're (ironically) a horrible missionary for open-source.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[theMerovingian]

That analogy is a bit of a stretch... With closed source or open source software, the user can be happy with either experience. For example, I'm glad to pay $49.95 and $15 a month for World of Warcraft. Based on my enjoyment of the game and the hourly cost of playing, that provides a good value to me. I'm personally very glad that the creators can make a living doing something they are so good at.

By the same token, there is nothing wrong with Christianity simply because there are preachers who go around talking about Jesus. I've met several individuals in the ministry who represented Jesus very well with their lives and with their words. I'm a better person for having known them. Simply because they are involved in the ministry doesn't make them salesmen...

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly they're all the kind who beat on your door then wax lyrical about something you don't care about.

I CARE about eternal life and such that missionaries go on about, I'm just sick of conmen who want me to spend my life using their product with no evidence at all that it works.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Rinikusu]

I hate tabbed browsing, but I still use Firefox. Mainly because of the security and pop-up blocking features.

If you had shown me tabbed browsing first, I'd have given you a big "meh".

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, you need a new keyboard.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Procrastin8er]

So you are saying that OSS does not have any crazed zealots aggressively trying to spread "the word"?

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[The Bungi]

If we were talking about religions, closed source is Chrisianity, with missionaries, and wars and such.

Your analogy is terrible, but alas, I've always considered open source to be more like the catholic church than anything else.

You have a pope, prophets, apostles, cardinals, bishops and priests. Then you have a flock of sheep. Unflinching ideology based on tenuous principles. Inability to compromise or accept criticism. Absolutism. All wrapped in a "join us or die" extremist mantra.

But maybe that's just me.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[CaptainPinko]

Show people tabbed browsing and they're hooked.

IE 7 comes with tabbed browsing. My g/f or whomever, buy a new lappy with Win XP++ and gets IE 7. "Oh, tabs!!! Great! No need for Firefox now...". I have converted many people to FF on the power of tabs alone but I don't see what will keep these people with Firefox when IE 7 comes. Somehow we've got to get people interested in the "right" reasons or get by with "Trust me."

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[s20451]

Anyone who thinks open source is free of encumberances such as "wars", "missionaries", zealotry, intrigue, turmoil, strife, etc. etc. need only read any thread on Slashdot that mentions RMS.

Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're saying open source stands for "no cuties for the oldies", perpetual retreat, and "tramp, tramp, bang, bang" is the highest form of enlightenment?

Are you an anti-antizealot?

But - The Buddha further advises old men not to have young wives as the old and young are unlikely to be compatible, which can create undue problems, disharmony and downfall (Parabhava Sutta).

Buddhism retreated from India, China, Vietnam, and other countries rather than involve its believers in armed struggles to preserve itself. Again, this illustrates the strengths and the weaknesses of Buddhism.

Particularly uncomfortable for me was the conduct of Harada Daiun Sogaku, well-known in the West due to Kapleau's influential The Three Pillars of Zen, and my own Dharma great-grandfather. In 1934 he recommended implementing fascist politics while criticizing education for making people shallow and "cosmopolitan minded". In 1939 he described the oneness of Zen and war: "[If ordered to] march: tramp tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of Enlightenment]. The unity of Zen and war of which I speak extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war [now under way]"

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[at_slashdot]

I think that Free and Open Source Software Movement, though it binds many people with different views together, is more about freedom than about features.

If Microsoft introduce tab browsing in IE or they fix the big security problems you'll be left with no reason to switch to different products (beside cost). Remember, till Microsoft released SP2 everybody was recommending Firefox because of it's pop-up blocker.

If you don't value your freedom there will be plenty of companies who'll find it useful to take it away from you. Microsoft being the most successful in doing that.

Preaching about freedom can be tiring and it's like waxing lyrical if people don't care about that. But since this is the feature that I value most (I can get Windows for free and I know how to configure it to be pretty secure) than I will continue to talk about that and not about how nice is to have tab browsing.

Yours.
Freedom preacher.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[scorp1us]

You miss the point. Yeah, there are people chatting about it, but no one is actually trying to deliver it to the masses. In otder to be a missionary, you have to get off your ass and get out there and talk to people, not just post about how great it is in some LiveJournal.

Look at WinZip's site. Probably the most poplular add-on aside from Winamp and FireFox. They actively sell their product through the website. Show me a website attempting to sell "Ark" for the Linux masses.

This gets to another point. Linux "missionaries" attempt to "sell" Linux as a whole. This is NOT what the article is talking about. The article is talking about promoting the *applications on Linux*.

I will claim that there is rarely such amovement, because there is no money on the line. Put money on the line, and you can really get many, many more people to promote it.

The "Get Firefox" campaign is the strongest OSS campiagn I've seen, yet it sucks in comparison to what a commercial company can do.

Now on a related note, I think that if we were to have an advertizing blitz, with Linux apps competing, that would attract more people to the platform just because it is worth fighting over. People would feel more "protected" (for lack of better word) because of the competition and other market forces. Linux development can stop at any time, but as long as there is competition, meaning a quest for money, means there is a Linux market they will know that the platform is staying current, cause it is good enough to fight over.

Don't dismiss the importance. Imagine replacing all the banner ads for software with banner ads for Linux software. What would one infer?
1) That Linux is worth having
2) That Linux is worth fighting over
3) That Linux (and other apps) are worth paying for
4) All the above.

There is a stigma in this country (usually real) that something that is free is not worth paying for. We know it not to be the case with Lnux, but the amerage person fails to grasp why it is free AND worth paying for. That causes suspicion. We can distract them from that if there is competition fighting for them to buy software. Note I said buy. Not just use.

To the OSS developer, he cares not, because he scratches his itch.. Maybe he has a little more prode and wants people to use his stuff, but for most people that will come as a back seat to feeding his face.

I really think that update of OSS would happen more if it were charged for. For the same reason why Starbucks can charge as much as they do for coffee. Generally, under normal conditions you try to save money.. but you'll pay more if you are given the impression that it is worth more, just for the mere fact that it costs an ass-load, and anything is an ass-load for gratis open source.

Rmember the GNU license does not prohibit one for charging for software.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[CranberryKing]

>"One adpots buhddism dur to principal, and not because someone else tried to sell it to me."

Guess he hasn't been to Asia much.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Gannoc]

If we were talking about religions, closed source is Chrisianity, with missionaries, and wars and such.

Oh GREAT. New Press release from Microsoft: "Open-Source is for Communists, and ALSO for people who hate Jesus."

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[scorp1us]

There is a disctintion that I failed to make...

All this "zealoutry" and flame war is more analogous to fighting within the religion for control. When you market to outsiders (which is what the article is about) the internal struggles are hidden. In actuality, those outseides never need to paricipate in flame wars, which are wars of words that are quicktly forgotten.

In my old age, I realize that less and less of this OS zealoutry matters. You may be too young to understand, grasshopper, but the world will revolve around whatever OS is out there, regaurdless of how well it fits the customer's needs.

What we are dealing with in the article is a comparison between OSS and proprietary. How proprietary has remained dominant, and the short comings of OSS.

MOST IMPORTANTLY in my post I was referring only to the pressures on which USERS are put under. USERS are not subjected to exclusive bundling (made with with financial agreements) , unfair business practies, and a clamoring for their dollars when using Linux. In Linux they are FREE TO INSTALL OR REMOVE anything. Furthermore, it costs them nothing and they lose nothing if they install or remove Linux software.

In the end the point that I am trying to make, is until dollars are on the line, OSS will never have the same clamoring for users that commercial software has.

PS. Dollars are on the line for Christianity, this is why preists and Nuns cannot take wives, so they leave their property (particularly real estate) to the church. They used to be able to marry, but they changed all that. Compare this to buhddism, where want creates suffering, so one ends up trying to claim property.

PPS. It could be surmised that Linux is pacifist, despite members in the community, because it has no real teeth. [In terms of market power]

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Mustang Matt]

I'm glad someone said it. That analogy made me cringe beyond any other I've ever read.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling.

Check his posting history.. The Bungi is a well-known MS shill.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

My g/f ... or get by with "Trust me."

My g/f tried to get by with "Trust me", but I still use a condom. ;-p

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a pope, prophets, apostles, cardinals, bishops and priests. Then you have a flock of sheep. Unflinching ideology based on tenuous principles. Inability to compromise or accept criticism. Absolutism. All wrapped in a "join us or die" extremist mantra.

But maybe that's just me.

No, it's not not you, it's SlashDot. Your problem is lack of experience. Go read a better Linux news site sometime (LWN?)

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source is Buhddism, where one must go and seek out enlightenment himself. There are no wars fought, to missionaries spreading the word. One adpots buhddism dur to principal, and not because someone else tried to sell it to me.

You have got to be kidding. The OSS world is absolutely rife with politics and treachery. KDE vs. GNOME... XF86 vs. X.org... and this is just two widely recognized. Combine this with some OSS fields are funded with research money and various groups stab each other in the back for those dollars and you'll find that the OSS landscape is as much, or more so, political and cut-throat than closed source.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[s20451]

I still think the analogy is shallow at best. Many people have observed that the open source software community is similar to a religion, but as far as comparing it to specific religions, I think that takes it a bit far. There are certainly elements of missionary zeal and righteous anger in the open source community -- just look at the furore over SCO; I'm sure Darl McBride would not characterize Linux advocates as passive or pacifistic, given that he has received death threats.

And closed source is like Christianity only in the sense that any large heirarchical organization, be it government, business, or religion, resembles another. Furthermore, there is plenty of money (in the billions) riding on Linux, from giant companies such as IBM and Novell. Large-scale users sign support agreements that are similar in nature to licensing agreements from Microsoft. The individual home user is still small potatoes to Linux, and my personal opinion is that this has nothing to do with the fact that Linux is non-proprietary.

To digress, you seem to confuse Christianity with Catholicism, whereas the latter is a subset of the former. One may as well argue that Buddhism is a violent religion because of the actions of the Shinto Japanese in WW2. In fact, my religion allows priests to marry, ordains women, and blesses gay unions. And let's not forget that Christianity has given the world some of its greatest freedom fighters and poverty advocates, from St Francis of Assisi, to Martin Luther King Jr, to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to Mother Teresa.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[2short]

I think your analogy needs few more christian sects in with catholicism. If there is one thing open source has, it's schisms.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[bluGill]

Just create a website that makes heavy use of CSS2.1. Test in Firefox and Konqueror, and then put a "best view with" banner on your page. That is what got Netscape all over.

P.S. I do not endorse this. I'm a big fan of simple web sites that any browser can view. Even Mosaic 1.1 if you can find it.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[obender]

You have a pope, prophets, apostles, cardinals, bishops and priests.

Don't forget all the various orders each one with it's specific rule (licence).

But maybe that's just me.

The general confusion comes from ESR's text, The Cathedral and the Bazaar. In there he compares the cathedral with closed source. But in reality most churches were built with donated money and were destined for the general use of the public. Most of the paintings in medieval cathedrals that you can still see today are contributed by various associations or individuals.
The bazaar on the other hand was, is and will always be about money.

Free software is nothing new or surprising for a catholic. You have a short life here on earth and you must do your best to contribute to god's creation.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[budgenator]

My wife just doesn't get tabbed browsing, watching her on the web just makes me insane. It's almost painful for me to browse w/o tabbed browser, so I've tried to explain it to her, show her how I do it, sometimes quietly and patiently, sometime emphaticaly but she just don't get it. There is probably a lot of people who aren't psycologicaly suited for a particular user interface.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[vanka]

I agree with jacksonj04's assement that OSS needs missionaries. I have switched over about half the people at my church to Firefox. (I am my church's computer guru.) How you might ask? I give them three simple reasons to switch:

1) Security:

1. jacksonj04, say what you want but people do care about security. They may not be security fanatics, but they do care. I switched my uncle to Firefox soley on the basis of Firefox being more secure than Internet Explorer. To him, tabbed browsing was icing on the cake.
2. 
   Now my uncle is fairly literate in computers; he isn't a guru, but gets around pretty well; so he probably isn't a good example of computer illiterates caring about security. But for whom I did a spyware removal understood the concept of increased security perfectly. How did I convince her? Well, she brought in her PC because it was running slow and getting a bunch of pop-ups. I installed Ad-Aware and it found about 1,000 instances of spyware. I ran Ad-ware several times, went through the registry manually, and still was not able to remove everything. I did a system restore, reinstalled her software, installed Firefox and Ad-Aware, told her to update Ad-Aware as she would her virus scan, and sent her on her way. When I told her that using Firefox would reduce her chances of getting spyware; this lady, whose computer knowledges stops at being able to open Word and browse the internet, grasped the concept that better security is good. In order to get people to care about security, and ultimately switch to Firefox (or OSS), is to put how the better security will benifit them. They don't care that Firefox doesn't have ActiveX or whatever, all they care is how this will benefit them.
   
   2) Pop-up Blocker:
   Yes, Internet Explorer 6 SP2 has a pop-up blocker. Yes, it works. But the one in Firefox works better. I actually switched to Firefox from IE 6 SP2 (I waited for version 1.0); and let me tell you, the pop-up blocker in Firefox is better. It gives me more control and does a better job than the one in IE.
   Now again, illiterates won't care that the pop-up blocker in Firefox is better or gives the user more control. So why mention it? Tell the user that Firefox has this feature. If they are comimg from the IE 6 SP2 world, they will demand a pop-up blocker. This is more of a reassurance that Firefox is infact a modern broswer with features to match. Informing the user that Firefox had the feature first and infact forced Microsoft to include one with IE will be icing on the cake.
   
   3) User-friendly:
   In this category are all the other features of FIrefox that in my eyes are icing on the cake. Features such as tabbed browsing, themes, extensions, download manager, etc. These features won't make someone drop IE and switch to Firefox, but are kind of cool. When I install Firefox for someone I usually show these features last because most users can live without them.
   What these features contribute is a certain cool factor to Firefox. When people are told that Firefox is more secure, etc, etc; the right brain says, "Switch!" But the left brain stall has veto power. Which is why it is important to show all the different ways you can customize Firefox with themes, extensions, live bookmarks, search engines, and so forth.
   
   People don't care if Firefox is free (so is Internet Explorer) or that it is Open Source (Open Sores? - people who read http://www.userfriendly.org/ will get the joke). All they care is how will this benefit them. And as the missionaries of OSS, we must show them.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

My g/f or whomever, buy a new lappy with Win XP++ and gets IE 7. "Oh, tabs!!! Great! No need for Firefox now...".

If tabbed browsing is the only usability gain in picking Firefox over Internet Explorer she will be absolutely correct.

You could draw from this the conclusion that the correct thing to do is to use obscure CSS bugs to show that Internet Explorer's rendering engine is sometimes in conflict with sections of W3C specifications, so that your girlfriend becomes a rabid web-standards evangelical.

Of course, it is perfectly obvious that 99.999998% of web sites are not pedantic little parables about standards compliance, so you'll have some trouble with this. Every one of the eighteen million web sites your girlfriend has heard of works fine on IE. That text is improperly left-aligned on #18,000,001 will not, trust me, be a deal-breaker.

A better conclusion is to figure out Firefox must add more useful features to the browser. They must be end-user-visible, genuine productivity gains that will make any user react with joy.

The easiest way to tell that you're on the right track is to conduct some usability testing, implement new features based on the results, and listen for the pained whining of geeks. The moment the word "bloated" comes up, you know you've struck gold. If you want minimalism, you know where telnet hostname 80 is. If you want IE to recapture its 98% peak market share, you know where the CSS3 compliance checklist is. If you want users, find features they can't live without and add them.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Brunellus]

I think that Free and Open Source Software Movement, though it binds many people with different views together, is more about freedom than about features. Joe User is as concerned about freedom as he is concerned about the torque value on the nuts holding the engine of his SUV together. What matter to him are features--cupholders, four wheel-drive, a bangin' sound system. (or in the software world: web browsing, email reading, porn viewing, whatever). Trying to sell "freedom" to people is really difficult. I've tried--they look at me blankly. Their next question is telling what does the free software do that I can't do with what I have now?. I appreciate and applaud the fact that the *movement* is all about freedom, but let's not kid ourselves-- freedom isn't going to bring people flocking to the FOSS banner. Killer Apps, Stability and Security will.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[at_slashdot]

Well... it brought me. I might be unique, but my guess I'm not the only one who switched for these not so practical reasons.

And if you tell Joe User than his SUV could be fueled only from authorised gas station that sell gas 10 times more expensive than other stations and he could drive only on "authorised by manufacturer" roads and that he will be commit a illegality if he changes by himself the oil without manufacturer approval he will get the freedom idea.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Brunellus]

Most drivers don't change their own oil--they wouldn't know how. Likewise, most users don't install their own OSes--they come installed already. Telling them that they *can't* doesn't really make that much of a difference, since they don't.

And incidentally--if that SUV is the vehicle that Joe User wants to drive, his stock response to your example would be : "Well, those other stations don't let me use this great SUV!".

Something has to jolt the average user out of his regular routine. Maybe it's necessity (in my own case, a computer died, and I couldn't afford a new one. Making Linux run on the old computer was the most viable option) but in most cases there will be a positive pull to a new, more interesting, more fascinating world, with real benefits (even if those benefits seem frivolous to us). Firefox is getting a lot of buzz not because it's free but because people see good things in it, and are enthusiastic about it. The freedom comes later.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[at_slashdot]

I think you are right about the jolt. Most of the people I know came to Linux after their computer got a virus or after they calculated how much would cost to buy all the programs they need. Money come before freedom for most of the people and I don't have any illusion that things are different, fortunately open source software is gratis most of the times -- so at least there's another incentive there.

Nevertheless Firefox has so many people enthusiastic about it not only because it's standard compliant and good technology but exactly because it's free. Opera in my opinion and experience is better, still you don't see so many people enthusiastic about Opera exactly because it's not free. Freedom counts no matter what you say. Same thing with Linux distros, you'll see more people enthusiastic about Ubuntu and other distros that were declared to be free and remain free (money and freedom) and less people backing commercial distros.

I can understand that you see yourself as a skeptical person and that you try to see the practical side of the issues, don't forget though that people are moved by ideas too... freedom is still a powerful idea (although highly overused and devalued in its use)

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[mitsuhama]

like here http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/N CSAMosaicHome.html

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[Daengbo]

Have you ever lived in Asia? Do you know that Buddha's disciples went out spreading their beliefs in virtually the same way that early Christians did? How did you think that the religion came to cover Asia from India to Korea?
Anyway, Free software evangelists are everywhere, and some of them are pushy, as well. I kind of like it that way.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[dave420]

Umm... I've seen PLENTY of people banging on about how I should ditch my Windows and use linux, switch to firefox, and use Gimp instead of photoshop. Saying OSS is like Buddhism is somewhat naive at least. The most proselytizing I've seen is from OSS guys.

Personally, I think closed-source enjoys great freedom as there's a real incentive to get it working as best as possible, and to get it to appeal to as many as possible. Just think - those Photoshop creators are paid to work on photoshop. Windows coders are paid to code windows. That's not a luxury you get with most open source software, and it shows. Coherent design, common keyboard commands, more involved QA, etc. It all comes together to make a good app great.

I use OSS quite frequently, and that is the impression I get.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[mikefe]

I charge to fix computers. My rates are 35/hr with a 3 hour minimum. For spyware, I just charge my minimum. That allows me to throw in a few perks.

Every spyware infested computer has these programs installed: FireFox (with ieview), Thunderbird, GIMP, PDFcreator and OpenOffice.org 1.1.

I tell them the reason why they want to use Firefox is to prevent most of the spyware from infecting their computer and remove the icons for IE. I also give them a book: Sams Teach Yourself OpenOffice.org All In One.

I might have to wait until a good book comes out for OOo 2.0 once it comes out. Some users might not deal well with the book describing the old interface.

Re:Marketing and Religion.

[The Bungi]

The general confusion comes from ESR's text, The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

No, trust me. It doesn't.

Free software is nothing new or surprising for a catholic. You have a short life here on earth and you must do your best to contribute to god's creation.

That's a... nice way to see it. I don't know that it makes me feel any better.

Feature Creep

[jdh41]

Most applications are written to fufill a role.
If you add addiontional bells and whistles you applicaiton will become useless for what it was designed for and you end up wiht another MS Office.

Does ls need flashing text and play a differnt tune depending on what folder your in?

Re:Feature Creep

[Anonymous Coward]

Does ls need flashing text and play a differnt tune depending on what folder your in?

Obviously not, but cp definitely needs a picture of a piece of paper flipping in the air as you copy files from one location to another.

Re:Feature Creep

[Sunda666]

and while we're at it, also a completely wrong 'estimated time remaining' like in the early NT4 days... hmmm... features...

True.

[Poromenos1]

That is frighteningly true. I made a program a while ago that tunnels a connection to another server while relaying the incoming stream to other users (a sort of MUD TV, called snoop, download it at www.poromenos.org), and I was amazed at the amount of questions I got about what I thought was self-explanatory. I ended up making an installation program with an option to install the settings for the MUD as default, because noone would use it otherwise (well, not without asking me dozens of questions about what the "remote server" should be).

Re:True.

[Tiger4]

See, you ran into the problem most small app programmers just never seem to consider fully:
The users don't care about what you care about.
The users don't think the way you do.
The users don't act the way you expect them to.

Every individual user will have their own take on "how it should be done". If your app doesn't take that into consideration, it will be dropped as "too hard to use" no matter how hard you worked on it or what cool functionality it gives.

The interface design, GUI or CLI, needs to have the users' point of view firmly in mind or adoption will be low.

Re:True.

[Narchie Troll]

Which user's point of view?

Re:True.

[Tiger4]

Which user's point of view?

That is the point and the problem. There are a lot of them. The app has to deal with the best common denominator. Not neessarily the lowest, but it has to act in a way that will not be preceived as cryptic by the users.

Lots of user testing will eventually solve this in any application, but the app may never get the chance if it starts off "too hard" and the developers are not willing to fix the problems that are found. Too often the answer will be, "Why change it? *We* know how it works."

Re:True.

[Wybaar]

In the first line of your comment, you have an unnecessary "small". Unless you're working on a very very specialized project, the number of users of the code will outnumber the number of developers and testers by at least an order of magnitude, sometimes more. No matter how creative the developer or tester are, the users will always come up with at least a couple of ways to break the product that you never thought of. "What's this bug report? If you press and hold left-Shift, then press and hold 8, and finally Page Down three times the program will crash? What the ... why ... *sputtering* ... why in the world did the person who filed this bug report ever do that???" [That's only a slight exaggeration from some bug reports I've seen.]

Re:True.

[Tiger4]

Agreed. How does that saying about Idiotproof go ...?

Re:True.

[dodobh]

Does that not depend on your target user? I would rather much have applications targetted at users who know how to read, and understand.

Unclear or missing documentation, on the other hand, is really bad practice.

Boot from CD Porn distro

[doublem]

Hear me out.

It's a boot from CD Linux, set up with all the links, video codecs and the like to let you put it in, boot and wank.

No traces left behind on the hard drive, no audit trails. If it spoofs a MAC address (A required feature) you can even use it on many corporate networks and no one will be table to trace it to you without puring over router logs.

Even better, make it a two part ion CD. One "regular" partition with something like documentation or even a backup of the user's data. The other is the bootable partition. A Linux partition of course, EXT3 or the like, so it can't be read from stock Windows. Design it so it looks like an Apple partition if Windows tries to get at it.

Instant software popularity.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[flynt]

If you have to use this CD in a corporate environment for its intended use, I think you should seek help, because you have a problem!

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[doublem]

Well, I wouldn't be using it, but we all know managers, PHBs and coworkers who would use it in a heartbeat.

Hell, I used to work with a network admin who played his favorite porn clips for general IT consumption, with the volume cranked loud enough for the customer service people upstairs to hear it!

If you want to make money off the CD, then start selling the links. Want links to your site included in PornLinux? Pony up the fee. Want some of your video clips (Complete with watermarks of course) on the CD in such a way as to make your site seem faster than the competitors? Pay the fee. Want to be a "preferred vendor" in the links on the CD, complete with links on the desktop instead of in the Bookmarks on the web browser? Pay the fee.

We all know Porn was the first thing on the Net to make money. Why should Linux be any different.

Now watch some bastard steal my idea, make a fortune and not pay me a royalty for the idea. I should patent it. Heaven knows the US Patent office would grant it in a heartbeat.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[foreverdisillusioned]

Holy crap... this is a GREAT idea. Not just for porn, but for any read-only file that needs to be securly archived. Programs like TrueCrypt (OSS, btw--check it out) can provide an insane level of security (and even plausible deniability), but that all falls apart at the OS level, where all kinds of remnant temp files and recent document lists and spyware can reveal you every time you view said files.

But a self-encrypted CD and read-only OS really is (almost) foolproof. The only thing you'd need to worry about after this is van Eck radiation, hardware keyloggers, and, of course, the strength of your encryption algorithm/passphrase.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[zev1983]

Hmmm, interesting...

I was actually going to suggest open source porn.

If you take these two together then... then... crap, sugar crash, can't think...

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually a friend and I had thought about this
4-5 years ago. The name of the distro would be
PAL (Porn Again Linux) Linux, and the slogan
was going to be "PAL Linux -- for when you need
a hand from a good friend!"

We figured if any distro was going to be insanely
profitable it would be PAL Linux, since what
made it different from the other distros was
the
a) Porn themes with all sorts of Porn images --
straight, gay, lesbian, group, you name it
b) The sound effects -- you know, when you
login into your desktop, you would hear this
sultry voice say "oh yeah, Baby it's gooood
to see you!" and when you log off you would
hear this beautiful voice begging you
"Noooo!!! Don't Stop!! I'm almost there!"

This would be a guaranteed winner we figured with
the male 18-to-Dead age group.

Feel free if you can get the venture money to
take this idea and run with it. I figure if anyone would like to sell this distro it would
probably be one of the many online porn sites.

--- Unknown Hacker

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[SmokeHalo]

So, can you make me one?

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[doublem]

I'm now seeking partners in a new business venture.

The Knoppix toolkit for building your own distro is a natural starting point.

Finally, a business reason to buy Knoppix Hacks, and I can claim it as a deduction!

Don't know if I'll call it PAL, PornLinux or what, but it's worth a shot.

Anyone know how to contact the people behind Stileproject? Anyone got Minka's business address? Who has the rights to all the Candy Samples videos?

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[doublem]

I wonder if the first release will make it to the Slashdot front page?

I find it funny that I got the "Slow Down Cowboy!" message from Slashdot the first time I tried to post the above.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be even more secure. You don't need the network at all. Just a live CD with X, mplayer, and an archive of porn. No network connection required.

Now just setup vending machines full of these things, for $1 a CD. Each one has a different archive of movies. Of course you can also download the ISO's for $1 a pop. But some people want the vending machine. Totally off the grid.

Now charge the porn industry to plaster ads on everything but the mplayer window.

Profit.

Hell yeah I'm posting this AC.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better --> if a major Porn site, say Playboy.com, started their own distro, they could give it out with subscriptions, thus allowing their feeling-guilty users to access their service from anywhere without as much fear of being caught afterward. Make it a stripped down kiosk type thing that starts you on their site and ends you on their site. Most porn users are probably only there for, say 3 minutes ( ;-P ) before they're done "surfing". If you can keep the client on your site for those 3 minutes you've just made a sale.

Porn's great weakness is that it's restricted to certain PCs (home) and certain times of day (when you're at home in the dark and the wife's not around). But if clients can purchase from work, the vendor will enjoy vastly increased sales.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[doublem]

And suddenly, a Porn idea spawns defense and espionage related applications.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to add that this is the greatest computer-related idea I've ever heard. You, sir, are a super-genius.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[doublem]

Hell yeah I'm posting this AC.

Why? Now I can't pay you a royalty for the idea if I use it!

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[sootman]

"No traces left behind on the hard drive..."

The keyboard, however, is another matter entirely. :-)

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[Anonymous Coward]

too late, I just patented this, mwahahahaha.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[wildwood]

If you want to make money off the CD, then start selling the links.

Other potential money avenues:

Offer custom CDs for particular porn sites, where the site owners control the links and distribute the CDs themselves (somebody else in the thread already mentioned this);

Point the CD to your website, which offers on-line bookmark management - and recommendations, and ads...

Subscription anonymizer proxy service?

If there's any way for 'dildonics' to get actual use, this is it - you control the OS and can guarantee driver support, so cross-promote the, um, attachments, and the sites that are, um, attachment-friendly. Sell the devices as an upsell. (This may be getting away from anonymous use, it may be more of a VOIP add-on)...

I'm sure there are others, too.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[wildwood]

You can be even more secure. You don't need the network at all. Just a live CD with X, mplayer, and an archive of porn. No network connection required.

An encrypted bootable porn cd might become some porn vendors' preferred way to distribute content - much harder for a casual user to pirate...

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[Anonymous Coward]

And where exactly would you get free, public domain porn? .. no really, I want to know!

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[Anonymous Coward]

...you'd get cool or attractive in some way, provides easy entry, and it is addictive.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[rob_squared]

Why not espionage too? It's already suited for trojans and viruses.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[doublem]

You DON'T. You make the porn sites pay to have a link to their web site added to the distro.

Or you make the users pay for a CD/DVD that's loaded with the porn that's been purchased from said sites. (Would require partnerships with said sites)

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[Spunk]

Don't know if I'll call it PAL, PornLinux or what, but it's worth a shot.

...and if it's profitable, that would be a money shot.

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[pipingguy]

And worse, this wouldn't be just cookie crumbs or Jolt cola residue, it'd be your actual, unique DNA identifier!

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[imperious_rex]

Absolutely FANTASTIC idea! That's an OSS distro project I would love to contribute to, and I'm sure there wouldn't be any problem finding volunteers to make it a reality. Anybody here that knows how to roll out a distro CD and get this going?

Truly, this is a distro whose time has cum!

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[mazarin5]

we all know managers, PHBs and coworkers who would use it in a heartbeat

They would use it to beat alright...

Just where do you work anyways? :)

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[doublem]

The place I used to work was the one with the Network Admin who watched porn in the office.

Ask me again in three months when the last of staff members I liked have been down-sized in the post buy out purge.

It's no Analogy

[uberdave]

It's not a metaphor. Many people exhibit symptoms of adictive behaviour towards their computers.

Re:It's no Analogy

[MrDomino]

Indeed, part of me worries about the dangers of computer addiction.

Fortunately, though, the other part knows better, so I don't get too jittery when I'm away from them for a while.

The problem actually is...

[Anonymous Coward]

that most open source projects are made by self prclaimed experts in software design that do NOT understand the common computer user.

When I attempted to upgrade my workplace to OpenOffice after fielding complaints about Microsoft Office -- suffice to say we are back to Microsoft.

NEVER underestimate the value of user friendly GUI's and software design. Then again...

Re:The problem actually is...

[CDarklock]

Not only do I agree 100% with this statement, but I'll actually put my name on it.

The problem with open source projects is not a problem with the open source philosophy, it's that any idiot can start an open source project. There's no easy way to tell the difference between a project from a reputable developer and a project from a dumbass. It's as bad as buying music... you KNOW 99% of the CDs you see on the shelf are garbage, but *which* 99%? I just want to grab a CD and go, not do a bunch of research.

Re:The problem actually is...

[radarsat1]

yeah but at the same time, you could sort of say the same thing about proprietary software. any idiot can start a business and makes claims about what their product can do. how do you KNOW it's not crap?

same way as with open-source.. if there's a large, dedicated user base, likely it's a decent product.

the only real difference is that in the proprietary case, you can't look at the source code to check what you're getting yourself into.

so i guess i'm trying to say... your argument is not limited to the open-source philosophy, it's general towards any project whatsoever. just because a project is being developed for the standard commercial market does not automatically make it better, just as a project being open-source does not automatically make it better either.

in the long run, whether commercial or open-source, it just has to be a good product. how do you know? consult other people who use it..

Re:The problem actually is...

[Rycross]

Most people, however, will view a product with a large company backing it as being higher quality. It isn't really true, as we can all attest to, but marketing is all about perception, not truth. Its harder to convince someone to use a product thats written by some random people on the internet than a product written by an established company.

Re:The problem actually is...

[symbolic]

When I attempted to upgrade my workplace to OpenOffice after fielding complaints about Microsoft Office -- suffice to say we are back to Microsoft.

Why? What tripped the users up so bad that you had to go back?

Re:The problem actually is...

[fossa]

I wish freshmeat or some of the other software aggregators had a place to somehow mark the coder(s)'s level of skill. I have a couple projects, but I am largely incompetant. They "work for me", and I release them because others may find them useful. I certainly put forth my best effort and take some pride from my work, but I wish there was a standard way to inform users that this is not professional quality. Or at least "I intend to take this projet to level (n)" or "this is it, take it or leave it".

I guess the distros do this to some extent, defaulting to "good" packages... But it certainly could be easier to obtain that information.

While I'm at it, it'd be nice if packages listings (e.g. apt-cache show) could show some more standard info about a package such as Interface: none, CLI, Curses, Gtk+, Gnome, KDE. Scanning through the long Depends: line is tedius. I guess that's the only example I have. I just can't stand the xprogram, kthis and gthat approach to naming... but I do appreciate knowing at a glace what sort of interface a program has.

OSS fallicy number 1

[banzai51]

Barring these things, most average users will stick with the status quo. In fact, many users never use a program on their computer that did not come pre-installed.

I call bullshit. From corporate environments to my most technophobe friends and family this is just not true. No how many times you try and make this your mantra for MS dominance, it just isn't true. Make a compelling piece of software, and the masses will use it as long as you make it easy to use.

Re:OSS fallicy number 1

[brontus3927]

So your technophobe family members just user their broadband connection to download the last version of OpenOrfice?

My grandfather uses Windows, MS Office and AOL because they were on the computer when he got it. The man knows how to take apart a tank, but has trouble learning how to use new programs and will stick with the first application he's presented with.
When I set my parents up with gaim, they kept asking "so I don't have AIM anymore? Most novice-moderate users mistake what a program does with the program itself. They think Windows=computer, Word=word proccessing, Excel=spreadsheet, AOL Instant Messenger = IM, Quicken= finance manager, etc.

Re:OSS fallicy number 1

[Narchie Troll]

And, of course, there's the people who ignore the product names altogether and call everything Microsoft. "I've got Microsoft XP."

Re:OSS fallicy number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Make a compelling piece of software, and the masses will use it as long as you make it easy to use, and easy to find. Chances are, the average user isn't going to sourceforge for their software.

Re:OSS fallicy number 1

[werewolf1031]

>> Barring these things, most average users will stick with the status quo. In fact, many users never use a program on their computer that did not come pre-installed.

I call bullshit.

I second that. How many times have any of us had to come to the rescue of techno-illiterate friends or family who had "tried to install this really cool new game/app but it just wouldn't work"? (NB: This usually turns out to be crapware, pawned off on an unsuspecting newbie, but that's beside the point.)

In fact, I don't personally know anyone who never uses any programs that didn't come preinstalled, even among my family members who don't understand the concept of remembering what folder they saved a file in so as to quickly find it later.

Me: "What folder did you put it in?"
Them: "Um, I dunno... what's a folder?")
Me: "Ok, what did you name the file, we'll find it that way."
Them: "Name? Uh, I just clicked 'Save'. Wasn't I supposed to?"
Me: [head explodes]

Point is, usually one of the first things new (inexperienced) users try to do is install a game they borrowed from a friend or found in the $10 bargain bin at Wal-Mart.

Re:OSS fallicy number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife's parents are typical older technophobes. There is no conceivable way they will ever install any program on their computer - they just use the programs that came with it.

If they got a pre-loaded Linux computer, they might not even notice it didn't have Windows, as long as the icons have labels like "Internet", "E-Mail", "CD Player", and so forth. And I wouldn't worry too much about (for example) KDE's overloaded menus - as far as they are concerned, if there isn't a desktop icon for a program, it isn't on the computer.

Whether or not an extreme technophobe can install a Linux distro or package is irrelevant - these folks don't do these things with any operating system.

Re:OSS fallicy number 1

[westlake]

When I set my parents up with gaim, they kept asking "so I don't have AIM anymore?

You might have begun by asking yourself "Why I am replacing a program my folks have been using for years with one they won't understand, haven't asked for, and don't particularly want or need?"

Tabbed browsing

[shiznit4172]

I don't know about anyone else but I'm never going back to a non-tabbed browser experience. My name is Shiznit4172 and I'm addicted to tabbed browsing.

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Anonymous Coward]

WinXP tabs your applications for you on the task bar. Does it really matter if your tabs are on the browser window itself?

Now, a real addicting feature of firefox would be adblock. The web really doesn't look the same without it.

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Bambi Dee]

It matters to me. It's easier to ctrl-tab between browser tabs only than to alt-tab through everything. If you're using the mouse, there're extra clicks unless everything's maximised or you don't mind a cluttered desktop. The taskbar too gets cluttered fast since it hosts all sorts of things, not just browser windows; unreadable with too many "tasks". With taskbar grouping enabled, there're yet more clicks involved. Furthermore I like to be able to "reload all tabs" if I have my regular set of news/community sites open.

Sure, if you don't mind that, it's obviously not a problem for you.

I agree about Adblock; what a relief. Doesn't seem to matter to many casual users though. Not that they want to punch the monkey but it doesn't seem to annoy them "the same way". Not sure.

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Blakey Rat]

BeOS did tabbing in the window manager, so you could drag two windows together, no matter what application they were from, and create a set of tabs with them. You could have a drawing, spreadsheet, web browser, and text editor all part of a single project all in a single set of tabs.

Tabbing shouldn't be app-level stuff, it should be window-manager-level stuff.

Snood

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough said! Chicks love Snood.

User friendly

[caryw]

And not the comic strip.
Most proprietary software is rigorously tested on the lamen to see how well he/she can negotiate around it. Where as all but the most popular open source projects, frankly, don't give a shit.

The complaint has been around since the beginning of time, but I still haven't seen much headway.
--
Fairfax Underground: Fairfax County forums and chat. Talk to your neighbors

Re:User friendly

[cybersaga]

Have you ever been forced to use a program from Allen Systems Group (ASG) called Visual Process??
This is a proprietary package, up to version 5.0 now, that was released with bugs that should have been weeded out before beta.

The problem is that proprietary companies make proprietary software to make money. If horrible software makes them money, then horrible software is what will be sold!

Re:User friendly

[faust2097]

Usability is all too frequently seen as a "bonus add-on" than one of the core pieces of software design. Slick icons and app "skinning" do not make anything more usable. If you developers aren't down with taking design criticism from a non-coder [as many I've encountered are] about things other than the way something looks at least take the time to read up on these subjects yourself. People like Don Norman, Steve Krug, Alan Cooper, and teams from Apple and Microsoft all have a great deal of writings on these subjects available.

Relevant reading on this subject by John Gruber:
Ronco Spray-on Usability
Sundry 'Spray-On' Clarifications and Corrections

Re:User friendly

[cpeterso]

Computers are not supposed to be easy to use. If someone bought a mega-computer, why hide that power from them? If they can't figure out how to use it, then maybe they don't really have a NEED for such a computer?

Re:User friendly

[bluGill]

Most proprietary software is user tested? Some, but not most. I have never worked for a company that did any format useability tests, and I suspect that is the norm. In the real world we are lucky if we (the developers) are given time to pretend we are testers before shipping the product.

Open source developers do care. However we have to deal with the real world, and in the real world everyone uses Windows or the Mac, and everyone double clicks. Few use the right mouse button, and nobody even knows they can click the middle button (now wheel) - Many mice do not even have 3 buttons. This is a major problem because double click has horrid useability (sorry Apple, but it does). KDE and Gnome end up defaulting to a lower useability mode where double click exists just to be compatible with everything else, despite the useability issues. (Actually Microsoft has figured this out too, but it is too late for even them to switch users, so single click is a power user mode that few use)

Don't forget one important but often overlooked part of useability: power users. When you use a program every day it is worth trading time to learn a hard but fast interface over a more learnable interface. (best is to provide both interfaces though) How much time depends. The phone company used to spend days training operators on an interface that would save less than a second per call, but those operators dealt with so many calls that it was worth it. Open source tends to do better in this area because the programmers are the users and the boss isn't beating on their door about a required feature for the next version.

The usual question: why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proprietary mass-market apps are polished, easy to install, and friendly because the developers make money when users choose their software.

Open source software tends to be powerful and arcane because the developers mainly benefit from having the software to use themselves and by attracting other deeply involved people to improve the software. It doesn't pay at all to make it friendly and attract useless users.

People mostly do things for their own benefit, as they should. I don't think it's good to encourage decent people to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of people who give nothing back. That just leeches the resources of decent, generous people and gives more power to the other sort.

If you want to sacrifice your luxuries for charity, go ahead, but don't sacrifice your living and weaken yourself to the point where you have to work at some job beneath your talents just to support your real work.

Re:The usual question: why bother?

[Ogerman]

People mostly do things for their own benefit, as they should. I don't think it's good to encourage decent people to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of people who give nothing back. That just leeches the resources of decent, generous people and gives more power to the other sort.

Which is why most of the good Open Source software out there is commercialized in one form or fashion.. Of course, there are other projects that thrive on the sheer fun of doing something really new and interesting.. like Blender. But most projects should be heavily commercialized. I personally am a big fan of direct user feedback through pledging to support desired feature development -- at least for smaller projects.

Re:The usual question: why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proprietary mass-market apps are polished, easy to install, and friendly because the developers make money when users choose their software.

Open source software tends to be powerful and arcane because the developers mainly benefit from having the software to use themselves and by attracting other deeply involved people to improve the software. It doesn't pay at all to make it friendly and attract useless users.

So if I move my OSS application to a proprietary license, it'll suddenly become "polished, easy to install, and friendly"? Wow, sign me up!

I think that what you mean to say is that _successful_ proprietary apps have those qualities. But then, why does this apply only proprietary ones? If Firefox were hard to install, would it have any noticeable level of success? Would any journalists be recommending it? More generally, is Firefox not designed specifically for those "useless users"?

I think the parent comment sidestepped the discussion. The question of "what OSS can learn from proprietary software" involves identifying good qualities in proprietary software. That means taking the time to distinguish the good from the bad rather than working with vague generalizations.

The biggest advantage that the iLife applications

[Anonymous Coward]

have is that they are a fairly small collection of tools provided by a default install. This is very different from most Linux distributions. Lets see... which web browser should I install? Which text editor? Which file manager?? Desktop environment??! Window Manager??!!!! The average new user has no idea what any of these things are, nor do they have any clue what the differences between any of the different options might be. Further, a complete installation with every possible option is cluttered and messy. Finally, since there is no basic known set of applications predefined and selected for the user, it is hardly possible to have everything set up to work together automagically - so that, for example, the email client knows what web browser is installed, the web browser knows what email client is installed as well as what audio and video players are installed, etc. etc. It is impossible to provided this level of seamless interaction out of the box and at the same time provide unlimited choice to the user.

rewire not the best example

[paulbd]

its a little ironic that he chose ReWire as an example of a proprietary plugin format as an case of "good stuff from the proprietary world". ironic because

1. its not a plugin format - its an architecture that requires significant re-engineering of every application that wants to use it
2. because the open source world has already learnt from ReWire and gone one better: JACK which is free of silly license restrictions, is free of silly limitations and is in every way more powerful. It runs on Linux and OS X, and is the de facto standard for inter-application audio routing on both platforms.

Re:rewire not the best example

[radarsat1]

in fact i don't even know for certain that rewire came before jack. could have been the other way around. anyone know?

Lesson One

[WillAffleckUW]

All Your Base Are Belong To Us.

if it's not open source, that's the attitude/lesson.

Re:Lesson One

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that we all have something to bring to this discussion and, from now on, I think the thing you should bring is silence.

Missing.....

[Anonymous Coward]

The existence of fanboys
The existence of positive propaganda
The existence of FUD.

What lessons indeed!

[pr0t0]

"What lessons, he asks, can open source projects learn from popular proprietary software?"

How about that marketing isn't free? Commercials, magazine ads, favorable "reviews" all cost money.

Word of mouth (keyboard) works for geeks because we know how to research products, read reviews, and of course read /., the sacred bastian of impartial news that it is. But that information doesn't readily filter down to John Q.

marketing

[Hollins]

Good FOSS projects seem to need more polished marketing. Firefox has made a good first step in this direction, but I have inevitably encountered resistance to adopting FOSS solutions in various workplaces, including small companies.

I'm not sure why this is, but when I show the decision makers a potential solution, the idea seems to be well-received until mentioning that it is free and open source, at which point interest seems to diminish. Recently, I was unable to get much consideration for pdfcreator, and it looks like we'll be buying a half dozen licenses of Acrobat, even though we just need each user to be able to generate a few (sometimes encrypted) pdfs each week.

I'm not sure why this is. Is there a perception of lower quality? A desire to have an official support channel (even though current support for most purchased software is atrocious)? Perhaps it's a mistaken, subconcious association between FOSS developers and hacking.

If it doesn't already exist, someone should set up a slick marketing website advocating FOSS solutions with materials for advocates to use in their workplace and content aimed toward purchasers who could use better education regarding what FOSS can provide.

Re:marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

tell me about that PDF crap... I worked for a medium sized company on a co-op term and I was assigned the task of coming up with alternative solutions to Adobe Acrobat because it cost lots of $$$ and the user that needed the software only wanted to create a PDF maybe once a month. 2 weeks of work, and 1 comprehensive presentation to my boss about why PDF995 was our best choice (with TCO calculations and *everything*) later, and the company *still* went for Acrobat, and they didn't even give us a reason (my boss' boss vetoed the matter)...
I guess brand recognition counts for something.

Re:marketing

[kurokaze]

I suspect that its due to being able to hold someone liable in case something went wrong.. that and the perception of lower quality.

Re:marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why this is, but when I show the decision makers a potential solution, the idea seems to be well-received until mentioning that it is free and open source, at which point interest seems to diminish.

Kickbacks. Most of the people making decisions are getting kickbacks either in the form of chachkis (open source could emulate this) or, for larger purchases, as a direct cash bribe (much harder for a not-for-profit outfit to copy). This is why sales and marketing budgets are as high as they are...

Re:marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow...where are the black helicopters?

The main reason is that a businessperson likes to reduce risk. What happens if the software explodes, the technician steps in front of a bus, and the business owner needs to get a report to the stakeholders the day before going public on the stock market?

It's comforting to have someone to call and hold liable (if neccessary). :: shrug ::

Re:marketing

[Rycross]

I think its all of the above. Free implies low quality. For most people, a product without a company behind it implies homemade which implies low quality. Open source implies "if you want support, post in the forum and get told to RTFM." Plus you can't hold a company liable. If one of my open source apps doesn't work, I can't call up the company and complain until they fix it. Also, if you're paying someone money, then theres some concept of that person oweing you a functioning product.

It basically comes down to support, control, and quality, it seems. Open source and free software still has a reputation of being unusable, low quality, and lacking support.

Re:marketing

[symbolic]

That's hilarious. If they believe this, have them read through the EULA they probably don't know about. When has Microsoft, or ANY mass-market software company, EVER been held "accountable" for something that went wrong? Generally, that just doesn't happen.

Re:marketing

[Rycross]

It doesn't matter what the truth is. All that matters is perception. Thats why companies have marketing staffs.

Re:marketing

[G-funk]

If one of my open source apps doesn't work, I can't call up the company and complain until they fix it.

And if windows / office doesn't work?

Re:marketing

[symbolic]

That's true. If it were me, I'd still try to offer them an opportunity to see it from a more pragmatic perspective.

Re:marketing

[pipingguy]

I'm not sure why this is.

I've addressed this before here.

It's because decision-making managers are largely risk-averse and resist change because failure reflects badly on them. This seems pretty obvious to me.

With commercial software, when something goes wrong, the program vendor/company can be pointed to. With "FOSS" software, the one who approved the adoption of the "alternative solution" shoulders the blame.

"No One Ever Got Fired For Buying IBM"

Re:marketing

[syousef]

I'm not sure why this is. Is there a perception of lower quality?

No perception about it. I've rarely if ever seen open source software that's less buggy than commercial software.

Even Thunderbird and Firefox give me no end of trouble. One example: Both these products stop responding after a couple of days of continuous running. (Firefox stops loading pages, Thunderbird stops loading email. Both silently).

With Firefox it was apparent. Web pages don't load. With a mail checker running in the background...well lets just say the first time it happened I didn't see my email for 3 days because I wasn't paying attention (resulting in an embarassing situation). I simply never had this problem with Outlook Express. (I can't stand Outlook proper though. That's way buggier!).

I've also run into the pdf creator situation before as well. Lots of software out there, but not much of it well written, and believe me last year I looked long and hard. (Issue being the license with the particular version of Acrobat didn't allow for its use on a server to serve multiple clients).

Re:marketing

[xilet]

No but it is the perception that if server_x goes down due to an OS bug we can call up Microsoft support, pay whatever the cost is and they will have a solution for it. Many companies don't feel they have the same ability with OSS, even if they do have that option because often its not an offical business that the higher-ups reconize they won't believe they can get support.

XP Import wizard

[scorp1us]

Is there a linux-side import wizard where I can import XP settings into Linux? Everything from desktop to window colors and such?

XP has an app that will package your computer up and transfer it to another. I think if there was a way that we could attach linux to the other side (Without XP knowing it was actually talkign to a linux box) that would go a long way to easing the transition.

I prefer KDE, but I would be interested in knowing if there is one for GNOME too.

Thanks.

Re:XP Import wizard

[carpe_noctem]

XP has an app that will package your computer up and transfer it to another.

I've been looking for an app in windows to do this for a long time.. do you remember what it was called?

Re:XP Import wizard

[YrWrstNtmr]

Files and Settings Transfer Wizard

Re:XP Import wizard

[Avyakata]

There is one called PC Relocator by a company called AlohaBob. I've used it many a time...it's quite useful.

A link to the company's site is:

http://www.alohabob.com/

Re:Or it could just be useful

[LordNimon]

College kids are poor, so what did you expect?

Nice Story....

[LaughingLinuxMan]

Nice story... now, back to writing my OSS clone of Bonzai Buddy.

-LLM

Useful, Ease of Use, Popularity

[toounknown]

Well, I think that for any piece of software to be popular:

It must provide functionality that is useful/interesting/fun (Productivity/Information/Games)

It must be easy to use, intuitive and of high enough quality that bugs are minimal

Software needs some form of advertising to make it popular. Popularity feeds popularity (Microsoft). Usually if the functionality offered is unique enough and useful enough, word of mouth/search engines take over and help with this.

Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does ls need flashing text and play a differnt tune depending on what folder your in?

Oh, my God, YES! I never realized before you mentioned it, but that would just RULE! I'm glad you asked.

Make it so my home directory plays "Burnin' Down the House," and my document directory plays, "Bang the Drum All Day." Could you make it so it would play randomly from a set of songs for certain directories? I'd like my porn directory to play one of: "Devil With the Green Eyes," "Foxy Lady, "Lay Lady Lay," or "Night and Day" (the Frank Sinatra version), or anything from the classic '70s porn movies, with that funky whucka-whuck, whucka-whuck guitar riff.

Thanks.

Re:Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're that effing desperate for theme music for your computing ways, wrap ls and write some funkty bashness around it.

Think Irfanview

[gosand]

Irfanview is one of the best pieces of software I have used. I really really wish that it was ported to Linux, I haven't found anything close to it. It is free and it simply kicks ass. It is fast, feature-rich, and has new features added often. It isn't full of restrictions and is not evil. It is the exception to the proprietary software model.

Re:Think Irfanview

[twray]

Amen. In fact, I really should send that guy some money.

Re:Think Irfanview

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Why load up a resource hog like The GIMP when Irfanview can suffice for many low level image manipulations? For image viewing, I have Picasa installed but I still tend to use Irfanview much more.

Re:Think Irfanview

[50m31sl4sh.]

Please don't forget that the guy (Irfan Skiljan) already gets money by bundling eBay spyware toolbar with IrfanView.
Of course, it is optional, but it installs unless you clear the checkbox.
And many stupid users are just clicking Next > without bothering to change default settings.
Anyway, I agree that IrfanView beats all the commercial image viewers and I use it a lot.

Re:Think Irfanview

[yarbo]

Imagemagick for simple (or complicated) image manipulations. gqview or kuickshow for image viewing.

Open source needs slickness and simplicity

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why opinion articles become news on /. but anyway.

The the Open source worlds needs to learn slickness and polish and speed which it has often seemed to turn it's back on. Well that's not really fair probably, but the inherant style of FOSS to base 1 app on thousands of different libraries and layers has always been a problem for some sorts of software. Not so much for Firefox perhaps.

FOSS already rules the internet with fantastic stuff like Apache, PHP and various flavours of Linux. To rule the desktop it needs good slick applications that people want, that deliver a comparable user experience to commerical software.

With some exceptions I don't see FOSS moving it's image away from ancient creaky UNIXesqe look and feel anytime soon IMHO. Take VLC for example, brilliant software but it's options are bewildering and arcane (even the devs say that on their site)

Re:Open source needs slickness and simplicity

[Effugas]

VLC's by far the least arcane of the MPlayer/Xine/VLC trinity. It's also the best way to get a DVD player on Windows (install, put in disc, right click on disc from my computer "play in vlc").

--Dan

Re:Open source needs slickness and simplicity

[dmarx]

Hell, VLC's less arcane than Windows Media Player-no need for codecs!

Re:Open source needs slickness and simplicity

[radarsat1]

true. i was having a hell of a time trying to get some xvids to play properly in XP once. tried installing the codecs a million times, but it never played properly. installed VLC and it worked brilliantly! put a huge smile on my face. AND its cross-platform. (in fact, the almost inherent cross-platformness of most open-source should be, IMHO, a huge selling point for OSS..)

Re:Open source needs slickness and simplicity

[Anonymous Coward]

VLC is nice, but I've had problems. Yesterday I loaded up an episode of Red Dwarf and the sound was all choppy. When I played it in Media Player, it worked fine.

Re:Open source needs slickness and simplicity

[Effugas]

Recent build? VLC's gotten *much* better.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[Anonymous Coward]

College kids are poor, so what did you expect?

Yeah, good point, I bet they were switching from really expensive browsers like uh... you know that really expensive one. Opera maybe. Maybe.

Sweet Jesus

[John Seminal]

In the absence of a monopoly, there are three traits that are likely to make an application popular: it is cool or attractive in some way, it provides easy entry, and it is addictive.

No, don't follow that advice when making software. If you want it to be popular, make is useful and easy to use. That does not mean dumbing it down, but make good MAN pages. If you are a tech wizard, let 2 or 3 people who are tech idiots read the MAN pages to see if they can figure it out. A english major would be a good person for this task.

I'll give you a clue. When there is some new tool in linux I want to use, if I can't figure it out in an hour, I move on to something else. My time is valuable. Don't make it a puzzle.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[brontus3927]

What part of "it provides easy entry" does your post contradict? It doesn't matter if the MAN pages will impart upon you magical powers simply by reading it, most novice-mid users (which is most of the computer market) don't read any documentation unless it's part of an interactive setup (e.g. Verizon DSL)

If I can't figure out a program, I read the manual. Then I see if a friend knows the answer. Then I will try the internet.
If Joe Shmoe can't figure out a program, he asks the power-user he knows. Thats the one and only stop they seem to make. My mother still makes me check the requirements for a peice of software to make sure "its compatible with our computer" before she buys it.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[wes33]

very good point. One key feature missing from almost all man pages is just this: examples. Pretend you don't know how to use find, but wanted to look for a file. Type "man find" and try to figure that out :) Some examples of basic usage are always helpful.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[John Seminal]

It doesn't matter if the MAN pages will impart upon you magical powers simply by reading it, most novice-mid users (which is most of the computer market) don't read any documentation unless it's part of an interactive setup

This is true for windows users, they don't need to read documentation. It is intuative, you just click your way through an instal. When you run a program, you keep clicking until you figure it out. But with linux, where a command is often followed by an argument, people rely on the MAN pages. For example, something as simple as "chmod" requires you telling it what to do.

If I can't figure out a program, I read the manual. Then I see if a friend knows the answer. Then I will try the internet.

I had a debian instal on an older PC. I could not get xwindows to work, the sound did not work, and the nic card was not recognized. I lucked out in one way, there was a program called PUMP that got the nic working. But I had to use Lynx to surf the web, and it kinda sucked. I looked for info on XFree86. The nice thing about debian was I had two logins and could switch back and forth, one for Lynx and one for the XFree86 config file. But after 2 hours, I still could not get XFree86 properly working on that machine. It would have been nice if the MAN pages had the information needed to make it run, so the internet is not needed because often with an instal, getting a nic working is not 100% guarenteed.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[lowe0]

How many end users know the man command? Ask your mother what a man page is. (Just watch, his mother has a CS doctorate and I just stuck my foot in my mouth.)

Hell, I had enough trouble teaching people to use the Office Assistant. And you think a monolithic text document viewed from the command line is the answer?

Non-technical end users NEED a natural-language-queryable help engine. Technical users are just fine with man pages. Remembering that non-technical users have different needs would go a long way towards better software.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[John Seminal]

How many end users know the man command? Ask your mother what a man page is. (Just watch, his mother has a CS doctorate and I just stuck my foot in my mouth.)

Hell, I had enough trouble teaching people to use the Office Assistant. And you think a monolithic text document viewed from the command line is the answer?

Non-technical end users NEED a natural-language-queryable help engine. Technical users are just fine with man pages. Remembering that non-technical users have different needs would go a long way towards better software.

Actually, I was bitching that the quality of the MAN pages can vary greatly from one program to another. If the MAN pages suck, and were written poorly, it is a bad omen. My suggestion was, if you are a killer programmer, and write the best applications ever seen, don't think you are the best documentation writer. Give that task to someone else. Keep it simple, give an example or two. And when you have your draft, give it to some people who are not famlilar with your software and see if the MAN pages are good enough for them to figure it out.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[Tiger4]

Yep.

Never assume the users will be dying to figure out the guts of your app. If they can't see how they will be getting results in a "reasonable" time, they will be looking to invest that time somewhere else.

Assume "newbie on deadline", then complicate progrm flow as needed from there.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[lowe0]

Okay, 100% agreement there. Programmers are not technical writers.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[2short]

You read the manual? I'm considerably beyond novide-mid level, and if I can't figure out the basics a program just by starting it up and poking at stuff, I'll look for something else. The manual is for when I want to do something obscure in a program I've already decided is worth my time. In the evil windows world, it's actually pretty rare that I can't figure out the basics just by poking around the interface, though admitedly, I'm better at doing so than most. I'm trying to even remember the last time I had to resort to the help before I could start getting anything done. Oh yeah, the GIMP. to be fair, I'm sure PhotoShop would not have faired much better.
I'm sure someone will now tell me how un-1337 I must be if I don't use stuff complex enough that I need the manual right off the bat. Whatever. I read more manuals than you can imagine ten or twenty years ago, back in the command line days. I'm just glad the world has moved on to better interfaces :)

Re:Sweet Jesus

[brontus3927]

I must admit it, I'm an avid manual reader. Granted I'm not artistically inclined, but I've yet to come across an image editor such as PhotoShop, GIMP, PaintShop that I could figure out on my own.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[BJBob]

I've been developing systems and supporting end users for more years than I care to remember and you're completely right about users not able to RTFM. There's no hope for them, however, if you try to persuade them that MAN is an alternative - I mean plain text, delivered via CLI! No, if Windows and the internet have taught us nothing else, it is that everyone pretty much knows they don't like CLI - period - and they DO know how to 'ask' the internet for information. So essentially, everything you create that imparts knowledge should really be delivered via something that looks like a web page (i.e. via Firefox/IE).

Innovate!

[water-and-sewer]

This is an axe I've been meaning to grind for awhile now. OSS is like the world's biggest development and research laboratory. Given infinite resources and gallons and gallons of free code sloshing back and forth out there, OSS has yet to come up with something stellar.

That's not to say the OSS world hasn't made progress, and even come up with some interesting and useful things. I love it that I can open remote files over FTP from a KDE "open file" dialogue. I really love Jedit's plug-in architecture, not to mention its plug ins. I love auctex and emacs and save time with bash scripts and catalog my crap with a Mysql database.

So where's the radical new approach to software? I'm off to buy a copy of OS X Tiger because I want spotlight and dashboard for my Mac, knowing full well I can download Beagle and zeroconf for Linux.

I'm afraid all of the "but Windows users won't go for it" mentality is damping the creative juices of developers who are afraid to radically alter the computing paradigm in fear of alienating the Windows sheep that won't switch to any OS that doesn't exactly mimic the Windows software they use mediocrely. So we're forced to shoot for the lowest common denominator.

What would happen if, just for a moment, a group of smart people with full access to OSS code and no particular interest in pandering to the sheep put their minds together and came up with something radical?

I don't know what that radical thing would be -- I'm not one of those smart people -- but I do know computing is remarkably unchanged compared to the state of things 10 years ago. Linux has caught up with Windows as far as I can tell. So where is the innovation? What could we do if we weren't so busy trying to keep up with the boring monolith in Redmond?

Re:Innovate!

[JLavezzo]

>What could we do if we weren't so busy trying to keep up with the boring monolith in Redmond?

We could start trying to keep up with Apple...

Seriously, I think this is what the parent article is about. His examples: iLife and Konfabulator are essentially OS X aps.
Most importantly, his point is we're not that far off from keeping up and nosing ahead.
With a little organization and funding these innovations really aren't too far off. I can imagine the funding coming from Novell, Red Hat and Ubuntu.

Allow me to provide the ADD summary:

1. Organize
2. Fund
3. Innovate
4. ???
5. All your box are belong to FLOSS

Re:Innovate!

[Politburo]

That's not to say the OSS world hasn't made progress, and even come up with some interesting and useful things. I love it that I can open remote files over FTP from a KDE "open file" dialogue.

This is your example of OSS innovation?

Re:Innovate!

[water-and-sewer]

You obviously haven't used Windows recently. I'm stuck to a Win2000 box at work, and let me tell you how crippled it really is. In usability, things like opening a file over FTP from the "open file" dialogue are a huge step up in usability.

Re:Innovate!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn, And I would argue making software "dumbed down" for the masses actually helps innovation by lowering the bar for people to begin productively using said software.

I don't see how you think apathetic obfuscation is a GOOD thing that will promote innovation?
Different people think in different ways.. the larger your pool of different users(read non-geeks) equals less ramp-up time in simply learning how to use your software.

With a lower user base, inspiration to innovate may not be as great. You will not have as many people expressing their needs to you (i.e. complaining) so you will have less direction on where innovation is needed.

Re:Innovate!

[Anonymous Coward]

start-->Run-->> ftp://foo.bar.com/myfile

This is hard? You can even use the cheesy "my network places" and treat ftp sites like drives. To echo the OSS zealot: just because you don't RTFM doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Re:Innovate!

[corblix]

This is an axe I've been meaning to grind for awhile now. OSS is like the world's biggest development and research laboratory. Given infinite resources and gallons and gallons of free code sloshing back and forth out there, OSS has yet to come up with something stellar.

An important thing to remember is that OSS is really just a new twist on the decades-old culture and traditions of academic research. Lots of innovation there, but nothing ever gets finished. That's for the companies to do.

Similarly, I think there is plenty of innovation in OSS, but these projects are often a little weird, so they don't attract a following, and no one ever hears about them.

The big challenge in OSS is not to figure out how to innovate, but to figure out how to turn innovative stuff into finished products, without corporate backing.

Re:Innovate!

[Politburo]

Actually I use Windows every day and opening a file over FTP is as easy as pasting in the URL. However, I'm on XP right now, I'll have to try on my 2000 box at home. I know for sure that it will open HTTP through a dialog but have never needed to do FTP this way.

Either way, I don't consider these huge steps in usability. It saves you that difficult step of manually saving the file from your HTTP/FTP browser to your disk.

Someone just discovered common sence!

[skintigh2]

Gee, so products that are hard to use, impossible to install, so convoluted you get a headache trying to use them and so rough around the edges nobody would ever want to try them (i.e. virtually every open source program on earth) WONT be popular?

The problem with most open source is that it's by nerds, for nerds. This is perfect if your target audience is nerds, but not if it's grandma. The installs make perfect sence to someone who once ported linux to a camera, but not to the average user. The interface makes perfect sence to someone who is used to command prompts and Solaris menus, but not to the average user. I wont even go into "cool..."

And before you flame me for not being part of the solution, I have tried. I have been ignored, and I'm not quite at the level to jump into coding the UI of a project.

Forgot an important one...

[montulli]

Fit and finish! Most open source projects lack the will to finish the small details to make a software product really shine. Bad installers, incomplete preferences UI, lack of visual style, and little to no documentation. All the little details take about as long to do as the major portion of the application and most projects lack the will or funding to go the final mile. It's also not very sexy to work on the final finish details. Most people would much rather fix bugs or implement new cool features than work on tiny UI details or *gasp* write some documentation.

Re:Forgot an important one...

[HogynCymraeg]

Thats because FOSS software rarely have release version. Sure, they have stable versions but that means that the code will compile and be fairly stable. That in itself != a release version.

Re:Forgot an important one...

[corblix]

Fit and finish! Most open source projects lack the will to finish the small details to make a software product really shine.

(As I said in another message), this is related to the fact that OSS is really just a new twist on the decades-old culture and traditions of academic research. And researchers never finish anything. (If you finish it, it isn't research any more; it's a product.)

Traditionally, academic researchers have left the job of making polished finished products to the companies. But now we're trying to use the academic methods to make finished products. It should not be surprising that the results are a somewhat unsatisfactory. But that doesn't mean they have to be unsatisfactory. This is definitely an issue that is worth some serious thought and discussion ....

Re:Forgot an important one...

[Makarakalax]

Documentation is boring to write. But it is something you could write for your favourite project. You have no right to be sarcastic unless you are willing to do that kind of work yourself.

If you happen to be a documentation writer I apologise, but I felt the point deserved to be made.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[Anonymous Coward]

College kids are poor, so what did you expect?

Poor things probably searched everywhere for a free web browser before Firefox came along.

Pretty obvious

[rbanffy]

Just like anything that's already said, this one seems quite obvious.

Any FOSS product will be popular if:

- It is easy or easier to use than alternatives
- It gets the job done
- It gives something alternatives don't
- It provides as little as possible disruption

I would like to point out a couple examples:

I use Gaim on Windows XP (and under Linux - under OSX I prefer AdiumX, which is libgaim-based anyway) all the time. I have converted some people to it, but most of the non-conversions are due to lacking features like video or voice (I know it will be solved soon, if not already). It gives something MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM don't: having more than one account logged on at the same time. Lacking features, tough, limit adoption. Running under Windows is a must - anything else limits adoption to, at most, 10% of the market.

My girlfriend was sold on Firefox because of the tabbed browsing. RSS is great and being able to import bookmarks is very convenient (But I am not very happy to lose the standard RSS links when I do so)

Similarly, OpenOffice.org Calc could win some users if it did something Excel would not do, like Monte Carlo analysis (I would love this one) or more than 256 columns on a single sheet (A client of mine would have switched from Excel just because of this). As it is, OOo Calc does neither. As a whole, OOo not being able to run natively under MacOS's GUI is also a problem.

I love to be able to export OOo Impress presentations as Flash movies, but I would like to add, forgive-me, more flashy features, like animated transitions. I would be very happy if I could export it as .fla instead so someone could edit the presentation and make it, well, flashier.

Please note that ease of use means "it's easy to make it do what I want it to". Apache may be devilishly hard to use by a casual user, but a trained professional can make it do things IIS cannot, will not and would not even dare to try.

Well. My US$ 0.02...

Re:Pretty obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

GAIM on Windows sucks. Its got a big assed interface, loads half a dozen plugins / protocols that you'll never use, lacks the ability for half-decent customisation of the various icons, and most fatally, relies on GTK, which simply doesn't feel native.

If you're looking for a good, lightweight instant messenger client on Windows though, check out Miranda instead. Its plugin based, so you only get what you want. Its also highly customizable - you can go for the simple look, or through a little effort, tweak it to look exactly like AdiumX. The only downside is that it doesn't really support Oscar for AIM, but that isn't a concern to me :)

Re:Pretty obvious

[rbanffy]

I like the ability to "pack and move" my whole IM experience from one machine to the other. Using the same IM client under Windows and Linux makes this quite easy.

I tried a very early version of Miranda, back when it was the current one ;-), but it never quite convinced me.

But, anyway, FOSS is almost synonymous with diversity, so, if you like Miranda and I like Gaim, let's celebrate we have choices.

Image is everything.

[xenostar]

As ridiculous as this may sound, epsecially to the nerdier crowd, a project's image has alot to do with its popularity and success. Sure, inside the OSS community, any project that's good is instantly recognized and widely used. But outside of the nerd crowd, people are not impressed by the things they have no idea about. A logo, a website, and what is probably most important a GOOD NAME, go a long way towards promoting a project and creating a sort of brand name to associate with the software. Look at Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Evolution. Then look at the Gimp, k3b, and rest of the amazing, but poorly named and buried in boring text pages covered with build numbers and READMEs, projects. It goes back to the RTFM mentality hurting the popularity of open source software.

emacs? phfft.. vi is the way to go!

[kurokaze]

let the wars begin! ... :)

Re:emacs? phfft.. vi is the way to go!

[thesuperbigfrog]

Hey, if vi is a what you use, enjoy it. I enjoy using emacs because C-x ( Emacs is great! C-x ) C-u 1000 C-x e

Re:emacs? phfft.. vi is the way to go!

[Anonymous Coward]

notepad

Re:emacs? phfft.. vi is the way to go!

[Anonymous Coward]

echo @echo off > hello.bat
echo echo Hello World >> hello.bat

Re:emacs? phfft.. vi is the way to go!

[Storlek]

You can do that with vi too, and in fewer keystrokes.

i Emacs^H^H^H^H^Hvi is great! ESC1000.

Re:emacs? phfft.. vi is the way to go!

[Al Dimond]

Why not just use a ^W instead of all those ^Hs?

Re:emacs? phfft.. vi is the way to go!

[Anonymous Coward]

copy con: hello
Yeah?
^Z

Re:emacs? phfft.. vi is the way to go!

[Storlek]

Too subtle. :)

My parents use non-OEM software

[cybersaga]

From the article: In fact, many users never use a program on their computer that did not come pre-installed.

My parents use GAIN software all the time.

Re:My parents use non-OEM software

[silvwolf]

It's funny because it's true! I was asked to look at my mom's neighbor's compute because he was having troubles getting AOL to work. I said no because I don't use AOL and know nothing about it, but mom insisted that I try to help him out. So I go over and go in to add/remove programs and start removing some crap. Get to Gator and he tells me to leave it there because he uses it all the time to store passwords or whatever the hell it does. I explained the concept of spyware to him, but he didn't care. He wanted to keep that damn Gator program. So he kept it and I told him to call AOL and ask for a new CD.

What he means is...

[marcus]

...An office suite that is as easy to use as this:

http://www.shockhaber.com/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.htm

and as addictive as this is:

http://www.hurtwood.demon.co.uk/Fun/copter.swf

Open source 'wow' value

[Anonymous Coward]

How about 3D Desktop?

http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php

Now if only I could get the @#$*%! thing working on my Gentoo box.

Re:Open source 'wow' value

[Anonymous Coward]

how about this one ?

https://lg3d.dev.java.net/

Re:Open source 'wow' value

[Anonymous Coward]

Eww, it's java based crap.

typical jack sh*t

[l3v1]

it is cool or attractive in some way, it provides easy entry, and it is addictive

I guess usefulness and usability doesn't count anymore where this guy lives.

Re:typical jack sh*t

[samspot]

This is to all the ppl spouting this crap. Why don't you RTFA? Usefulness and usability are exactly what he's talking about.

Bonzi buddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, many users never use a program on their computer that did not come pre-installed
What about Bonzi buddy and Gator? I've seen plenty of average users with those!

Re:Bonzi buddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

duh, the author probably means if something is preinstalled, most people wont install something else that does the same thing.
other then chat clients, what software do people install that also comes with a standard windows based machine? even then, chat clients each have some draw(number of friends on that system), which is the reason to install.

Related

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

There's a version of Firefox for USB drive that you can use under Windows. You launch it from the USB drive and it redirects all cache and temp files to the USB drive. So you can surf on any PC knowing that you're taking the evidence with you. I don't know the link but it's in Make magazine.

Re:Related

[doublem]

A good starting point. I'll look into it. Of course, any OS level key logging will be a factor, and the traffic will be easily traceable to Machine Y in the logs. Temporarily changing the MAC address and machine name will be far more secure, and a simple press of the "Reset" button clear nay and all evidence.

While there's no way to make it impossible to track the traffic back to the actual machine, it an be made difficult enough that most IT departments won't bother, especially if you;re not using much in the way of bandwidth.

Besides, a hidden partition on a bootable CD or DVD opens up sponsoring options by allowing for videos and the like to be read form the CD. Perhaps a tool for building the CD / DVD could include an option for copying your favorite clips or libraries at burn time. Add a "My Favorite Porn" folder to the boot from CD desktop.

Re:Related

[mge]

here's one version , which uses the following:
Portable Thunderbird - available at http://portablethunderbird.mozdev.org/
Portable Firefox - available at http://portablefirefox.mozdev.org/
Portable Sunbird (Calendar) - available at http://portablesunbird.mozdev.org/

hear hear!

[kurokaze]

I agree with this actually. I myself have sat in front of linux install screens pouring over the individual packages and unselecting those I don't want or need. And this is after I've already chosen a profile!

I'm liking my ibook more and more.. now if only Yahoo and MS would make their messengers feature equivalent on the mac!!!! grrr..

Re:hear hear!

[JudicatorX]

Debian
tasksel

It's just that simple.

In fact, it's even simpler, seeing as how *debian runs tasksel as part of the setup process*.

Re:hear hear!

[kurokaze]

ah yes.. I've never used Debian unfortunately.. my experience is all from Red Hat's products... not even Fedora

Re:hear hear!

[JudicatorX]

I ran through a number of distros before I settled on debian... I do recall a 'what do you want this computer to do' question coming up during RH7.3's install process though.

Re:hear hear!

[kurokaze]

Yup, actually RH7.2 is what is running on my former router box right now. The installation of that particular distro was somewhat painful..

Re: Lessons Proprietary Software Can Teach Open So

[benja]

...addictive

Supertux!!!

'nuff said. I'll go back to play.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[xenocide2]

On the other hand, I've seen my brother crash OpenOffice.org multiple times by cutting and pasting from IE. Top notch, no really.

chicken and the egg

[Anonymous Coward]

"In fact, many users never use a program on their computer that did not come pre-installed. However, by creating an attractive, easy to set up, addictive application, a developer can motivate the average user to break this barrier and try something new."

Explain again this wonderful technology that allows you to use software without actually using it? Now _that's_ innovation! Doesn't the user have to "break the barrier" in the first place to try the application, let alone install the application?

(I know the intent of the paragraph, but the wording is just a bit humorous...)

But what about...

[IdJit]

Usefulness? Just because it's addictive, doesn't mean it's useful.

Why it's this way.

[C_Kode]

It's this way because in the FS world most applications are made because "Bob" wants it so "Bob" writes it. Commercial (proprietary) software is usually written for the masses. When several people in the FS world like what Bob's writing they all chip in and help. Most of the time the problem is that the skeleton of the application is already written with a hideous UI and/or configurating system. Bob was writing something to help himself. Not something easy to use for the masses.

Kris brings up iLife. iLife is more than just an application, it's a service. If "Bob" were to write an application like iLife, he would be required to offer services like iTunes. Well, "Bob" doesn't have financial backing to employ services like that.

My point is that when you write something like iLife, you must start from the beginning with the plan of these being used by thousands of people and you must already have the resources to develop something like this. iLife wasn't created from the Wits of one man. There was a large collaboration before any real work (and money for the matter) went into such an application.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[dasOp]

As always, quality is undefined. What kind of quality are we looking at here?
Some apps are rock solid while looking like hell being insanely difficult to install. That's not quality for me, even though you don't mind the looks and find the install easy (perhaps cause you've done it 15 times, getting the hang of it at your fifth time?).
Most if not all FOSS software are rock solid but are sadly lacking at 2 and 3. And that's what this is all about.
Neither Firefox nor OO or even Thunderbird have these problems. They're easy to install, run well and look decent. I'd guess all three factors came into play when your college kids decided to get and keep them.

Ask Joe User

[Spy der Mann]

Tell him what he doesn't like about certain software, and why.

Unfortunately, (some) Linux Gurus have forgotten the meaning of usability. Accustomed to the intrincated labyrinths of the command line, they just don't care to make something more user friendly (particularly the installations).

It's like moving from the city (with all comodities) to the jungle. Unfortunately, developers don't have a team of "joe user" testers. And sometimes they ABHOR them. It's not rare (at least for me) that you encounter a FOSS project whose author says: "Want this feature? Implement it yourself". However, the developer doesn't help AT ALL so you can incorporate those features.

I remember a FOSS GUI/language (whose name I shall not dare utter in public) where I wasn't given the least of support. The devs never bothered to make a simple class diagram, or documentation so I could help doing the development in windows. It's been 6 years, and only in the last months it got out of "pre-beta".

And it's worse when your requests get denied "by principle". i.e. (from another FOSS project)
"Why can't I just click on the form and add the control? Why do I have to select the stupid sizer from the object tree? Can't you make this process transparent?" Then expect a long philosophical discussion on why you can't do something that you're always used to (VB, Delphi, etc).

Sincerely, it's hard when geniuses take the control over the USABILITY DESIGN of their software. They're not hired to make something look or feel right, they do as they please.

Or simply they like some existing FOSS that isn't user friendly but more popular, and never started clones that would rock

i.e. have you seen Linux ports (clones) of:

- Photoshop (GIMP is better, we don't use photocrap)
- irfanview (what?)
- Visual Basic (real programmers use python/c++ / don't use GUIs / program using the API themselves / insert your stupid excuse here)

In general, I can give a simple phrase for FOSS programmers to remember:

"The user (customer) is always right". Trust me, it'll make your program much more popular than it is now.

Re:Ask Joe User

[JudicatorX]

Maybe we don't want popularity. Maybe we just want software that doesn't crash or fuck up all the time. And maybe we realize that "the idiot is *not* always right". In fact, when the average user knows very little about software in general.

Why should you expect that they should have anything valuable to contribute, when they don't even take the time to put punctuation in their communication, have spelling and grammar even half-correct, or refer to every module, icon and screen in a program as 'that thing'?

Regardless of what one might think about freedom and all that, for the most part, people need to have lots of things decided for them, at least in the area of computer software.

Re:Ask Joe User

[Spy der Mann]

Why should you expect that they should have anything valuable to contribute, when they don't even take the time to put punctuation in their communication, have spelling and grammar even half-correct, or refer to every module, icon and screen in a program as 'that thing'?

Because, that's the population that will use your software. Whether you like it or not.

Re:Ask Joe User

[EricTheGreen]

And maybe we realize that "the idiot is *not* always right". In fact, when the average user knows very little about software in general.


Might be so, but they generally have at least a dim idea of what they want to accomplish with that software. Whatever else your software does well, if it raises too many stumbling blocks between those "idiots" and what they ultimately want to accomplish with it, you'll have a pretty small user group and you'll miss the occasional opportunity to learn how to effectively provide some useful service to those folks, alongside whatever you actually are trying to accomplish yourself.

God forbid, the illiterate idiots might actually have something worth hearing once in awhile...

Re:Ask Joe User

[JudicatorX]

Great... the future of user feedback is now:

User: "Mwaah mwa mwa mwha wa"
Dev: "what's that you say?"
User: "Mwa wa wa wa wha wa wha!!"

I tend to prefer user input that's intelligible...

Re:Ask Joe User

[Brunellus]

I don't think too many FOSS programmers are all that concerned with popularity. They certainly aren't going to make a kiling with their stock options when they see that their market share is going up.

Other that the satisfaction of a job well-done, what reward is there?

Re:Ask Joe User

[eraserewind]

Unfortunately, (some) Linux Gurus have forgotten the meaning of usability. Accustomed to the intrincated labyrinths of the command line, they just don't care to make something more user friendly (particularly the installations).

Why should they? They are by and large not writing for anybody but themselves, and whoever is interested enough to put up with the interface or look at the code. If you don't like it, don't use it. Those (commercial vendors, etc..) who are distributing such applications unmodified to mass users need a big slap upside the head however.

OOS dev

[Wizzard84]

OOS are the best software for devloppement matters but they lack of user-friendlyness to be apealing to masses. FireFox made it. Good looking interface, easy-to install and comprehensive preferences. There should be more open source interface designer. The user don't care about how the software was made. I as a programmer would rather use a java based class then a .net one because jave is cross platform. But on the user end that dessission has no importence. In big cmopagnies there's always a noob guy to test apps. This guy don't know anything about the behind the scene side of the app. He's only here to tell you taht you're app needs to be more easy to use or taht he can't understand waht this or that is all about. If you want to make a software addictive you neet it to have a straight foward usability and a more advanced one... I think that what needs to be rethink in Opsen source devlopement.

web apps?

[ashot]

In this context its easy to see why web apps are becoming more and more popular. As technologies improve the gap between RIA and desktop application narrow, and yet the threshold for using an application online, ie visiting a url, vs installing software and all that entails (security risks, uninstalling if you didn't like it, etc) is substantially lower.

This actually gives me an idea.. why not have a framework for the installation/removal of applications which removes most of this hastle, making installing (and removing) an application as easy as visiting a website?

Ignoring the security problems for a second, isn't this possible? I know I just click "next" a x times until the app installs. Just standardize and automate this process completely, everytime I use the software download a new version if its available, etc..

Webstart and Central come close, but there is nothing like this for native apps.. or is there?

Re:web apps?

[matvei]

You mean something like Klik?

Re:web apps?

[ashot]

well, yes.. exactly like that.. but now for Windows so that it actually makes a difference.. *ducks*

Really though, does that work well? Thats exactly what I'm talking about.

No wars in Open Source?

[Millennium]

It looks like someone needs to hang around the vi vs. emacs discussions a little more often. Or possibly GNOME vs.KDE.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[Anonymous Coward]

word-of-mouth comes into play as well.

Compare MySQL, Postgres and Interbase/Firebird RDBMS.

MySQL has had "the buzz" moreso than the other two, even though there are some tools that lay MySQL tools to shame, that both are just more powerful for db apps beyond "blinding fast queries", and both require much less-to-no DBA maintenance once installed.

MySQL maybe pretty fast for simple SELECT queries, but then again, so can be an AWK or GREP script.

Stop focusing on Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Source code is not only not a feature to the majority of users, but is a negative. Users may not care if the source happens to be included, but the great majority of them understand perfectly well that they have neither the skills nor the time to change their programs. So Open Source really doesn't mean squat to users. Ease of use is, ability to get a job done quickly have meaning for users. Open Source will struggle along playing catch-up until we stop talking open source and start talking about the things that are important to users, and why a particular program is best for the task.

I will switch to any spreadsheet program/office...

[Anonymous Coward]

suit that has spreadsheet funtionality of more than 256 columns. I am running into data table with more than 1000xtens of thousand elements i=on a daily basics.

Does anyone know of a spreadsheet with this large table capacities?

Re:Or it could just be useful

[LWATCDR]

Really I just ried it from firefox and IE and both worked.
BTW yes I have managed to crash Office.

Re:Flaimbait and Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

What gets you (you, metaphorically) is that most people who profess to be religious tend to have some sort of factor of not accepting other religious paths, or those who choose no religion for themselves.

Personally, I like choosing whether to give things to Cthulhu, Shiva and Ra, depending on my mood.

Too many people have a hard time reconciling the harsh, angry, judgemental god of Abraham's time (whichever you want to call it) with other religious tenets in the particular faith which say the exact opposite.

Like, calling oneself a Christian, but being all "old testament" about one's views on the world.

Bonzai Buddy ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... wherein you nurture a virtual tree, shaping it to your whim and helping it grow into a work of immeasurable beauty.

Automated interface analysis?

[sjbe]

Most proprietary software is rigorously tested on the lamen to see how well he/she can negotiate around it. Where as all but the most popular open source projects, frankly, don't give a shit.

While I agree generally with the thrust of your argument I think it may go a little to far. I do think many open source folks care about the interface. They just aren't very good at it and lack the resources. Serious interface testing requires a lot of resources that many open source projects find difficult to come by. They need to be able to observe how people use the product and that's not always easy.

I do think there is an opportunity for someone to create some open-source tools to help open source (and closed) with interface testing. (Maybe this exists, I'm just not aware of it) Imagine a tool which essentially records (screen capture) movies of users conducting certain tasks and also provides statistical data about things like time between button clicks, which menus were looked at and for how long, etc. I'm thinking something along the lines of a set of debugging tools (vaguely similar to a profiler I guess but for actions instead of code) which are oriented towards user interface work. The results could then be sent back to the programmers similar to how Mozilla uses TalkBack. This would solve at least one of the problems open source projects have in getting information about user interface problems.

Of course that doesn't mean the programmers will necessarily do anything with the data but at least it provides a method for those who take interfaces seriously to get some data to improve theirs.

Re:Automated interface analysis?

[silicon not in the v]

This is one of the things that bothers me the most about somefree(freedom or cost) software. The usability is not there. I ran into a case of this just this weekend.
We wanted to put strong passwords on our financial accounts because of a security failure on one of our email accounts. I checked sourceforge for some good programs that will generate and store strong random passwords. KeePass looked good, so we tried it out. Create an entry--OK. Generate a password with cool user-controlled methods of randomness--OK. Try to copy that password to paste it into the change password dialog on my financial site--HA HA, Not a chance! Why would someone want to do something like that? As they were generated, they would not display on the screen. They were in "******" characters and you could not select or copy them. There didn't seem to be any way to copy this password out of this program and into a web browser where I'm trying to log in or change a password.

I went through all the sections in the help files and found nothing useful. There was even a FAQ in the help files. I would have thought, "How do I USE these wonderfully generated passwords?" would have been a good question to have there, but no dice. So I asked a web designer friend of mine if he had any recommendations of password programs, and he mentioned Whisper 32, which I tried. It works great. It generates the passwords, and you can copy them and paste them into your web browser, just like people would actually want to do.

Re:Flaimbait and Troll

[scorp1us]

Your post is flaimbait. What makes you so arragant to believe that Christianity is forced on me? I freely accept God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Christianity is about a private and personal relationship with God. It is not about anything else.

God is the creator of the universe, he sent his Son to save us. When he created Adam and Eve, they lived with only one rule, not to eat from the tree of knowledge. Adam exersized his free will, he was tricked by Satan to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. What does this mean? Adam now knew good and evil, and could judge for himself. Why is this bad? Because there is only one perfect judge, and that is God. Adam will judge badly, and that is the source of all unhappiness. We use intellect to judge, but we are not all knowing, we don't understand everything. This self-love of our self, the thoughts that we are smarter than everyone else leads to this false judgements. What we must do is turn over all judgement to God and live as he tells us to. Remember, he is God, he created everything, he gave us life, and he gave us Jesus so that we may be closer to Him.

No, your post is fail bait.
Christianity was forced on you be cause of the Emperors and Kings of days past, the missionaries that delivered "the lords message" to so many other cultures (I do not know your heratige). You may not have been coerced, but someone in your family was coerced into it somehow.

Why Do we celebrate X-Mas in December? Jesus was born In late March/Early April. Could it be that Christianity changed the date to coincide with pegan traditions? (Why do we have a X-mas tree?) Your family was coerced at one poitn into believing.

Adam was not tricked into eating the apple, Eve was.

You can freely accept God and Jesus, that is your right, but it was not always so free and easy to accept or not to accept.

habitual

[grumpyman]

When I am in need of any software/tools, the first place I look is sourceforge. Others start at BestBuy.

Remove* barriers to entry

[munch117]

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/arti cles/fog0000000052.html

Easy to install == Sale!

[chris_mahan]

It just dawned on me that Crapware 3.0 will sell by the boatload if it has a very nice installer, and very friendly wizards. Nevermind that it crashes and is horribly typing intensive. User Joe Sixpack assumes that it's his own fault for not understanding the program, but the program obvioulsy works as advertized since it installed so flawlessly.

To sell to non-geeks: Flashy, expensive, and very clean install. Oh, and don't allow already open software to be returned to the store.

Non-geeks will influence the buying of other non-geeks like this:

Joe: Hey, you've ever heard of Crashalot?

Jack: Yeah, I bought it last week, it's so easy.

Joe: Woah, sounds cool. Was it hard to install?

Jack: Naw, man, it was a breeze, just pop the CD and click "install".

Joe: Is it easy to use?

Jack (won't admit he can't use it): I used it a little, but I've been too busy lately.

Joe (Jack is such a moron, he can't use it, but I'm smarter than him!): Oh, ok.

Jack and Joe leave.

15 minutes later, Joe is buying his very own copy of Crashalot at Best Buy for 69.99 with a $10 mail in rebate which he won't mail in because, let's face it, he doesn't want to be a sucker and give out his home address.

Meanwhile Calvin Pixel is finishing off apt-get install RockSolid 3.4.2 on Sarge, for free, and reading the 12 pages sample config file.

Guess who is going to call who when spyware galore comes to town. I just hope Calvin will charge $100 for running Search&Destroy and Adaware on Joe's box.

Bad logic favors those who take advantage of you.

[jbn-o]

That's the same logic Linus Torvalds used to decide which source code revision tracking program he should pick. It's the logic that puts users in the hands of the proprietors which places them at risk of unwittingly losing features (see Cory Doctorow on iTunes), losing security (Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows variants), and losing privacy (proprietary software makes an excellent means of acquiring backdoors, keyloggers, and other kinds of software people generally don't want).

Just like with so many other things in life, it's time we recognize that we are connected in what we want and we need the freedom to help one another. With regard to computer software, this means paying attention to one's software freedom and teaching others why software freedom matters.

So what you're saying is.....

[slicenglide]

That open source software should be like snood, crack, and pornography?

Re:Or it could just be useful

[NotoriousQ]

Yet, they buy iPods and wear brand name shirts.

No, college kids are not poor, they are just cheap when it does not enhance their "style".

autopackage!

[radarsat1]

am i really the first to mention it? AutoPackage should make things better for linux.. once users see some Click-Install action, they'll love it. (Personally I don't have a problem with Synaptic, but it's not what users are used to. I watched my friend using OS X once and he downloaded an app, and installed it without even thinking. Drag-dropped it right into the dockbar and he went and used it. Users tend to prefer this than starting up a special "install new software" app..)

Sign me up!

[foreverdisillusioned]

You'll need "field researchers" to determine the absolute best/cheapest/most perverted sources of porn on the net, right?

Re:Sign me up!

[doublem]

Nah, I'll just use my bookmarks to start.

Er.

Yes, yes I will need such researchers until such time as the distro starts selling ad space and links!

I think that the BIOS is the killer app

[smittyoneeach]

when was the last time you seriously thought about it?

OSS Users don't like Lusers

[miyako]

I think that the actual reason that there is limited adoption of F/OSS software is that most people who use it don't want to see Joe User using their software, I think that at the end of the day, a lot of the geeks would perfer to see uncle joe and aunt tilly to go with a proprietary/semi-proprietary solution like Apple, or yes even Microsoft.
I think the real reason that a lot of people shout about wanting F/OSS adoption is they actually just want a little more support from commerical vendors.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Flaimbait and Troll

[Mustang Matt]

You win the award for most clueless poster on Slashdot. Congrats dude!

Re:Or it could just be useful

[damgx]

Piracy of Microsoft Windows software? We all know it happens and MS takes it easy hoping once you have money and a job, you will be a source of income.

Besides can you even buy a new laptop without it having Windows and some kind of 'basic school' programs on it such as MS Word.

To choose OpenOfice is a real choice, the user has to do. I think this is interesting...

Can my 80 year old client use it?

[pulse2600]

That is the benchmark I would use. Commercial, proprietary hardware and software is tested time and time again with focus groups of all sorts of demographics. I visit this guy once a week who is 80 years old. He uses the internet via cable modem, has a scanner, printer, and digital camera all attached to a laptop that he can pack up and take with him on vacation if he wishes. He has Windows everything + AOL despite the cable connection. It all does exactly what he wants it to do for him.

I'm sure Bill Gates and Co. go through endless rounds of focus group testing, developing their products around each group's results. Successful software is designed as close to your target market or user base's requirements as possible.

Now why in God's name would anyone add the cost of AOL on top of broadband? Ask my 80 year old client how wonderful it is that AOL puts everything right in front of him. He doesn't have to go digging to find the function he wants to use, there are pretty buttons and animations to guide him. Anything he would want to use the internet for is packaged right into AOL's software. And guess what, AOL's software is FREE (yes I know its useless without AOL service, but still). So here we have an example of a corporation that publishes software for FREE that is so popular that despite already having an internet connection, millions of people subscribe to AOL just to use the software on a CD they give away in every post office across the United States.

What kind of resources do AOL and Microsoft pour into researching what their user base wants to see in their software? Now compare that to the research some dude living in their parents' basement does on their target market or user base before posting their code on freshmeat or sourceforge. Which one do you think is going to win over a huge population of non-geek users? When's the last time an Open Source vendor sat me down in front of a computer in one of their offices and said "Here's what we came up with, now here is a survey. Please stay for the group discussion afterwards." When did they do that with grandma and grandpa, or a classroom of fifth graders? Even if they did, did they listen to grandma and grandpa or the fifth graders and implement their comments, ideas, and needs into the next release of their product?

Now tell me how a person or organization can accomplish market research and focus studies on the level of AOL, Microsoft, or any large vendor that the average Slashdotter love to hate? That's right people, they are capitalist, money hungry corporations that jump at any chance they get to make an extra dime off of John and Jane Doe, cause some percentage of that extra dime is going into really high level market research and a shitload of developers to churn out a response to that research.

In the real world all a product really needs to be is what your target market wants at the price they're willing to pay (or free, for that matter). Doesn't matter if it's software or chicken shit.

File it under "Obvious"

[ZioPino]

Good conclusions but sad that we have to realize this years later. Look at "Delicious Library" for a clear example of how an application becomes popular

UI Design

[KaiserZoze_860]

I think a great analogy for this is the automotive industry: the people that design and build the engine are not the same people that design the dashboard/body/etc. The software created by the OS community are great engines. That's it.

While user testing is the best way to develop user friendly apps, there are known values and 'best practices' available to GUI designers that the hard core coder is not familiar with. Millions of dollars worth of university research is poured into understanding users and a lot of that info is freely available. Just using the basics can already improve many apps out there.

So, 2 things need to happen: 1- the OSS community needs to breed/recruit designers with a background in UI development. 2- Integration of the code and the UI needs to be easy to prototype and finish. As a designer, I know layout, but I don't know anything about windowing or developing in APIs. So I would need another piece of software (like VB or at the least the Design View of Access) where I can move around the widgets and components and graphics then mesh it all together later.

Re:UI Design

[Ilan Volow]

The problem is that many interaction designers who might have contributed to OSS become alienated from that process when they propose necessities like designing UI before code and get told by the OSS community "go code it yourself", "that's not the unix way", "that's just the opinion of so-called 'usability experts'" etc.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that the hacker culture that dominates OSS is refusing to admit that this is happening and is attributing the lack of interaction designer participation to interaction designers "not knowing that Open Source exists".

I think it's pretty much safe to say that as long as OSS refuses to own up to its mistakes, to make the many needed policy and cultural changes it needs to make, and to renounce their backwards Unix Cultural Bigotry (tm), there will be few interaction designers participating in OSS in the near future.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[dago]

that they used unlicensed (free) version of Microsoft products like everone else ?

For small programs at least...

[slapout]

Make the installation simple. Don't make me click "Next" 30 times.

For some programs you might even consider static linking.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[dogfull]

mind you, according to GP, they *switched*, which tells us they had another (propietary) product first...

which does in fact mean they chose it on quality

My own experience

[Anita Coney]

I've been trying to switch to Linux from Windows for several years. I always have trouble trying to get something working or to get some software to complete a certain task. I have to search through thousands of sites to find the correct answer I need, and at times, it can be frustrating.

Contrast that to the fantastic experience I had with BeOS 5 Personal Edition. It installed in under five minutes. Set up all my hardware, including a TV card. For any task I wanted, I could simply go to bebits.com and get what I needed. It wasn't too long that I dumped Windows completely and used Be exclusively. If Be hadn't folded, I'd probably still be using BeOS to this day. For the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to be a mac-head. I truly loved BeOS on an emotional level.

I can't help but think that because BeOS had a single company behind it, that switching was made much easier. While open source is great for getting something to work. Proprietary software is great for making the process easy and pleasurable. (Of course Microsoft is changing that rule via Product Activation. Calling up and asking permission to change your hardware is about as frustrating an experience as you can get.)

UE / ID is the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

What OSS needs is support form usability engineers/ interaction designers. A good interface is what current CSS lacks, and is a weak point that must be exploited.

It aint that hard people! Common sense goes a long way, and keep those pesky coders out of the interface, for god sakes.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[McNally]

On the other hand, I've seen my brother crash OpenOffice.org multiple times by cutting and pasting from IE.

Really[?] I just [t]ried it from firefox and IE and both worked.

Because as we all know, if it doesn't happen every time it's not a real bug, right?

Re:Or it could just be useful

[LWATCDR]

Nope it could be a real bug. But if it does not happen every time it could be.
1. A bug in the OS. Windows does manage the clipboard.
2. A bug in IE. IE could have put some really whacked out data in the clipboard. While I admit that OpenOffice still should not crash because of that.
3. A minor bug in OpenOffice. You want to bet your life that no one ever crashed Office by pasting from IE? The parent's post said that OpenOffice as not as stable as Office because x happened. I simply stated that I could not duplicate the error.

in other words...

[drew]

as JWZ said it:
"How will this software get my users laid" should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social software).

Re:Flaimbait and Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

And I like pudding!

It's not even that

[Anonymous Coward]

Most OSS programmers want a Joe User to meet them at least partway in the middle.

Lots of vague comlpaints: "It feels difficult"
Lots of daft requirements: "But it doesn't use Adobe plugins"
Lots of requests with no help: "Your program should produce realtime previews"

You can help by creating a mock-up diagram and/or process flow program to help show the route that is easier to take. You can give proper bugfix requests. You can try to write some code or the man pages.

Meet them halfway and the programmer will help willingly.

Re:It's not even that

[Blakey Rat]

Bullshit. I've tried improving the UI in several applications and most open source developers call you an asshole and move on. Or just give you the cold shoulder. Hell, even some Mozilla project bug reports have been like that. (I reported that the process for reporting bugs in Mozilla was too hard for the average user; they replied that it wasn't intended for the average user.)

So close

[temojen]

But it's not "in soviet Russia".

Re:So close

[doublem]

Mmmmm.

Russian babes.

/me remembers his college days.

Lack of standards support

[tepples]

If Microsoft introduce tab browsing in IE or they fix the big security problems

Fixing the big security problems would involve running ActiveX controls in the sandbox of a separate limited user account. Good luck getting users to understand that, especially given that most users just run as admin anyway.

you'll be left with no reason to switch to different products (beside cost).

Other than the fact that Microsoft has already disclosed that it does not plan to bring the breadth and correctness of CSS support in mshtml.dll, the layout engine underlying Internet Explorer, anywhere near that of Gecko, the layout engine underlying the Firefox browser?

Re:Lack of standards support

[at_slashdot]

"Other than the fact that Microsoft has already disclosed that it does not plan to bring the breadth and correctness of CSS support in mshtml.dll, the layout engine underlying Internet Explorer, anywhere near that of Gecko, the layout engine underlying the Firefox browser?"

"Good luck getting users to understand that"

LOL, I just rearranged your words...

Re:Lack of standards support

[tepples]

[precise explanation IE sucks because Microsoft won't support CSS] "Good luck getting users to understand that"

More and more web sites are designed to look good in Firefox, Opera, and other browsers that follow newer web standards. Many already look better in Firefox than in IE 6 or even in the upcoming IE 7. In fact, IE will make a mess of some sites because Microsoft has chosen to play dirty rather than follow standards. Therefore, IE is substandard.

Any tips on refining the language of this pitch?

Re:I will switch to any spreadsheet program/office

[2short]

Lots of spreadsheets can handle tables that large, but they call themselves databases.

Why be popular?

[FhnuZoag]

Devil's advocate:

Why does Open Source want to be popular? Seriously - this is a question we need to ask. With proprietary software, the reason is simple - income. With open source software, however, that isn't so often true.

To an extent, Free/Open source software do require popularity. But it isn't user popularity - what is required in an input of developers, code-tinkerers, programmers to take an interest in the software, and to help develop it. If not directly, then at least add some positive feedback. Bug reports, feature requests, etc. Now, making the software easy to install and use does attract more users - but realistically, what sort of positive benefit would an open source project derive from being used by people who would normally never use a program on their computer that did not come pre-installed?

Much of the time, open source developers are just playing straight into proprietary software's hands. (In many ways, Microsoft etc dictate users' perceptions of what is 'user friendly'. Many complaints about alternatives are that they fail to replicate proprietary software's flaws.)

It looks like what Open source really needs is really some sort of social engineering, to coax more people into viewing software as something other than essentially singular 'products' but instead as an ongoing process in which participation is required. Perhaps open source needs free software?

Re:Why be popular?

[Anonymous Coward]

A good popularity can be made if it's made a system where some normal user(s) (not programmer, but interested in using computers in his work,hobby,etc...) can start a OSS project: he proposes (*) and interested developer contact him to start to work. Devs make the code part, and the user(s) test, debug, make manuals, supplies info, etc. I think many oss devs. want to make some project but they don't know any science, area other than computers, and they end making yet another ftp client...

with this OSS can get a popularity that no money can buy.

(*): excuse my english

Re:Or it could just be useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop blanketing us .. some of us are living off of mommy and daddy, and some of us are working a twenty hour week on top of our five courses.

The only name-brand shirt I wear I found in a throw-away heap.

Mod Parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up, he's absolutely right about this.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[Jane_Dozey]

Many colleges also provide the necessary software for their students. If they had Windows to run these OSS apps on in the first place then they probably had IE and Outlook by default. If they couldn't afford an office suite they could more than likely have obtained a legal copy from their college or an illegal copy from a friend.

The useability conundrum

[jago25_98]

People tend to have abilities that polarise into 2 camps:

- `empathy` with code
- empathy with people

So the people who code best aren't so good at getting into the mind of the numbskull.

The problem isn't quite as bad as you think.

Non-coders, this is where you come in.

I have often noticed things in OSS that can be improved and as someone who doesn't enjoy coding I find I'm really good at noticing useability problems.

I sometimes put in requests but I feel I'm stepping out of line because I don't code. In fact it seems rude to use someones gift to you and then critique it. Value the views of the non-coder.

- so you have to be massively diplomatic and even then your suggestions will probably be ignored because...

- there's little incentive for OSS to work well for non coders.

If anyone can think of ways to improve these problems please get in touch. Computers are annoying enough.

Consistency is important

[ClubStew]

However, by creating an attractive, easy to set up, addictive application, a developer can motivate the average user to break this barrier and try something new.

Consistency is another major factor that contributes to users' use of applications. Windows UI guidelines, however, are to help developers develop UIs that are consistent with most other applications that run on Winodws.

Developers don't honor this - and I see it both on closed- and open-source platforms, though on the latter more often - are only shooting themselves in the foot. Some applications - very few, IMO - benefit from a different look, such as media players. Most desktop applications (or even console apps using ncurses or something) should be consistent so that users don't have to learn a whole new program all over that isn't consistent with the other applications they use.

Re:The biggest advantage that the iLife applicatio

[Bent Mind]

I have to agree, though not really with the choices you list.

I've run SuSE since 6.2 and Gentoo for a year or so. One of the things I really like about SuSE is that it's easy to try out several competing applications.

Where I get a bit confused at times is libraries and frameworks. I'd love to find a good Web site that doesn't just list a generic description (like most project pages seem to), but rather compares competing libraries. I'd like to know if there is a good reason I should tell a configure script to use library x instead of library y. I've found most programmers seem to get a little miffed if you ask them why you should use their library.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[budgenator]

Just remember today college kid eating ramem noodle, Dinty More beef stew and Hormel chilli; becomes tomorrows Purchasing Manager, IT director, or CEO.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can afford a college education, you're not poor.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[ticktockticktock]

That isn't necessarily true. Some people get financial aid or various grants/scholarships to help them through college.

You don't have to convince the masses....

[zogger]

...the masses will run open source after you convince a handful of big vendors to offer open source alternatives on the systems they ship. Dell, IBM/Lenovo, HP/Compaq, Sony, Toshiba, etc, those are the people you need to sell on open source to the point that it's common to see it on the store shelves next to the closed source stuff. And you won't be "selling" them until the distro wars consolidate better. You need a linux standards base, integrated, also something that doesn't need as much RAM and processor power as the competition,(don't underestimate that selling point to the big vendors if you can pull it off) open source equivalency apps that work and don't suck, and a lot of games. Then this "the masses" guy will be "sold".

From the write up: "many users never use a program on their computer that did not come pre-installed"..sorta true, skip spywarez which people install, but ya, what he said. It simply has to come pre installed to make major inroads, until that is driven home to developers and the "me too" distrologists, nope, it's gonna be slow hard pickin's.

Re:Or it could just be useful

[C_Lo_Fresh]

College kids also have no qualms about pirating software, so price isn't the issue.

UNITY

[f3773t]

It seems to me that the article left out one very important thing that open source can learn from proprietary software, (namely M$ software)
UNITY.
Everything moves along harmoniously and there is no infighting and disagreements ... at least to the general public. But I mean I just read on slashdot that the open source foundations are now arguing over GPL and some other open source license.

Educate About Price

[Carcass666]

I have dealt with a great number of people who want Microsoft Office installed on a second computer but don't realize that to legally do so, they need to shell out a few hundred bucks.

This is rampant among SOHO users who think because they bought a license for their office computer they should be able to load it onto their notebook. They have no idea (or are in denial) of Microsoft's EULA and what it means in the cost of using Office.

As people are educated about the true cost of using proprietary packages (especially Office), they will may be more receptive to alternatives.

Excuse me, but mentioning VB is stupid

[RedLaggedTeut]

VB and its relatives have a really bad history.

Even bash, which predates it by many years, works better than VBScript. I guess its not 100% fair to make this reflect on Visual Basic itself, but if you hang out with "thugs" thats what you get, a bad reputation.

The fact that few using VB so far have either the skill or the interest to make their own free version of VB speaks for itself. It is not motivating to see microsoft patent simple stuff like the VB "ISNOT" operator just to see if they can get away with it, either ;-)

However, a little googling(VB users can't do that I guess?!?) even turned something up that you might want to try: KBasic or Freebasic or the help of RealBasic. I guess you will then start to complain that you can't use it as your scripting language in office apps, but there are tons more scripting languages available are being used.

Same for GIMP, it works, what do you expect, a 1:1 clone? Also, a skin/mod for GIMP has been made recently to make it look and act more like Photoshop, so what is your point .. That it has the wrong name?

Now with irfanview, you got a point, but that is largely due to the fact that irfanview is distributed for free, and as such managed to gain a large userbase (which doesn't include me, so I guess one can live without irfanview). This makes irfanview into a juggernaut/black hole for improvement, however that does not mean that a collection of a few FOSS programs can't do the same and more.

Nearly all commercial software goes "bad" at some point and will require you to pay somehow for it, e.g. VMware, iconedit, various ftp clients, etc., and as such are bad to come to rely on. At first, this isn't bad, but later on it gets really costly or hard or illegal to route around that damage.

I agree, that the customer should be always right, but sometimes it is hard to take him seriously, for reasons like inflexibility and unwillingness to even use google.

I'll do you one better

[patio11]

The national security apparatus already has a document-storing technology which allows perfect security given the attacker doesn't have physical access to the hard copy. It can be used side by side your usual computer screen, without exposing any of it to your network/hard disk, and doesn't require a reboot like SpookLinux. It will never be on a recent document list and leaves no temp files. No spyware known to man can read it. And, best of all, it is 100% resistant against keyloggers. Which is probably why the military, the intelligence agencies, the government at large, and private industries in the know spend billions on this tech every year.

Learn more about this revolutionary security product at one of our major defense contractors.

Re:I'll do you one better

[foreverdisillusioned]

The point of this is that ANYONE can use it with cheap, off-the-shelf computer equipment. The NSA can spend millions on special hardware to keep their deathray plans a secret, but this is a VERY secure solution that can be had using a couple hundred dollars' worth of equipment, and the resulting disk can be securely read on ANY computer (that supports boot from CD.) You can even include anti-TEMPEST fonts, if the computer you're on isn't van Eck-proofed.

It would be ideal for mild-moderately sensative government data, and for safeguarding industrial secrets; no special hardware required.

Been there, done that.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Cool/Attractive? Penguins and philosophy! Faster and free!

Easy? Knoppix! Pop it in and go!

Addictive? Virtual desktops/workspaces! Can't live without them now!

Seriously, the problem is a PR one. IBM needs to give us more ads with more content. Ads that will make people actually go do something, not just redirect them to IBM's linux-for-enterprise page. Ads that will kick the pants off Microsoft's "do more with less" bullshit.

Opportunity for FOSS

[QuestionsNotAnswers]

Shouldn't we be encouraging companies to pay???

Start up a reputable sounding company that takes FOSS software, relabels it (FireFox -> Fox Internet Explorer) and sells it.

Donate half of any revenues to the software developers and everyone is happy!

The important things are to make no changes to the software except for relabeling the most visible parts, so that all FOSS supporters know that it is the same version, and are happy to point 'corporate' clients to the 'commercial' software!!!

GnuCash documentation: a shining example

[KWTm]

Most people would much rather fix bugs or implement new cool features than work on tiny UI details or *gasp* write some documentation.

Agreed! And yet it is those things, especially documentation, that make certain programs such a pleasure to use.

The shining example I have in mind is GnuCash. I had shunned it, thinking, "Ugh --financial program. What a boring concept!" It was only during an utterly boring flight as I was clicking distractedly on my Knoppix-booted laptop that I came across the GnuCash documentation.

What an interesting read! I couldn't believe I was actually getting into the user manual as if it were some spy thriller novel. Everything followed a logical path and kept leading me on. Since then, I have been happily using GnuCash where previously I had used ... well, actually, I hadn't used anything comparable at all previously.

The GnuCash documentation writers probably deserve as much credit as the programmers themselves.

MOD PARENT UP! man pages need examples!

[Anonymous Coward]

*Thank you* for saying that! Writers of man pages, take note! (please?)

Re:Or it could just be useful

[spitzak]

And how exactly does that explain why they switched away from the IE that came free and preinstalled on the computer?

Innovation is already there

[Anonymous Coward]

(Following paragraph from http://www.cabalamat.org/weblog/current_opensource .html)
It's quite simply untrue to say open source software isn't innovative. The first web browsers and web servers were open source. The first network-enabled windowing system, X Windows, is open source. There have been many innovative open source programming languages, such as Perl (often called "the duct tape of the Internet"), Python, and PHP. In the fight against spam, one of the most innovative techniques has been Bayesian filtering, and most (if not all) of the programs using this technique have been open source.

To name a few projects:
zope
ruby
python
perl
php
haskell
ocaml
scheme
emacs & vi(!)
wikis
spamassassin
nethack
vnc
ssh
cup s
apt
aalib (ascii art library)

Besides there are thousands upon thousands of libraries and small projects that may be obscure to the masses, but fit the right bill for those who need it. Maybe all are not inventing the gun powder, but somebody need to do them anyways.

Check out results from academic environments. Functional languages like Haskell, Smalltalk, Scheme etc. The problem with real innovation is that people are too stupid/unreasonable to be able to use it. Why do you think we're stuck with procedural languages after so many years? Functional languages are superior in every ways, just that they're too difficult for people to comprehend. Check out O'Caml for some innovation.

Hey, we still have NO true relational databases yet. The reason is it's just too difficult for normal comprehension levels!

People want dead simple and modular solutions. There's just no reason to innovate just for innovation's sake. If a 3-tier architecture fits most problemspaces, that's what people will use. Both out of familiarity, and simplicity through homogenous systems.

Then there are the thousands of garage-inventors.. but who cares if its open source or not? Corporations are never inventing, HUMANS are. Wether its open source/free software or not just tells us about the priorities of humanity, not anything else.

I think you want more out of computers than what they can give you. That's why you complain, instead of doing something with it. Either you need to innovate yourself, or just let it rest. 3D screens and all that fuzz will not make your life happier. Your quest may be spiritual.

I Care!

[Makarakalax]

I write software, Open Source software. I really care about the interface. Sometimes I spend 20 hour days tweaking and improving the interface, rewriting entire elements of interface, all in response to user-feedback and my own careful analysis.

Comments like yours -- comments that are so fashionable and trendy nowadays -- really put me off writing any software altogether. Such broad, unpleasant, unkind and rude generalisation and obvious distate.

Many users say things like "developers don't give a shit about us!" Well guess what, many users are equally horrid and unpleasant to developers.

Religion is Marketing

[rtb61]

Religion and open source software have nothing at all to do with each other, and only came about as a result of a third rate marketing drive by Microsoft to denegrate users of open source software.

Marketing is changing as a result of the internet, not as a result of the marketing on the internet but because marketing can so readily be demolished on the internet. Product quality, value for money and reliability are starting to make a comeback versus marketing and crap.

The gains of Linux and Firefox against the full range of microsoft marketing (lies, FUD and political manipulation) reflect the diminishing power of marketing in an enviroment where consumers are more readily able to gain and share information.

So, where are the utilities?

[mikefe]

What about open source utilities for windows?

I've been looking a while for a CD burner that will work in restricted user permissions like Nero. All of the free as in beer ones on windows work after you run the free utility from Nero, but none of the Open Source ones do. :(

What about a defragmenter? Sure, there is dirms, and buzzsaw, but they are freeware with registration (probably soon to be nagware).

You want people using open source? Let's overrun the non-free platforms, and make the programs cross platform so they can move to a FLOSS platform with ease.

You have shareware that shows you where there are users and interest. Just take over those software segments with FLOSS.

Rome verses Christianity

[Morosoph]

Rome verses Christianity is probably a better analogy. The sharing philosophy of OS mirrors that of original Christianity. Buddism is more like the *BSDs, where others can take freely without having to give anthing back. Christians transitively attempts to save the next generation from hell, which neatly mirrors the GPL.

Microsoft is like Rome: first they attempt to suppress the upstart religion, and then, in time, they co-opt weak forms of it, such as their "shared source".