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?

[ch-chuck]

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

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?

[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?

[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.

Too Funny

[airrage]

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

Interesting turn of a phrase ...

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.

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

[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.

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!

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. . .

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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

[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

[doublem]

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

Re:Boot from CD Porn distro

[sootman]

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

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

It's no Analogy

[uberdave]

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

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...

[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.

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.

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.

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

[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

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.

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.

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

[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.

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:Or it could just be useful

[LordNimon]

College kids are poor, so what did you expect?

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.

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.

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

[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.

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

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: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

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...

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.

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

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

[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.

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?

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.

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.

Remove* barriers to entry

[munch117]

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

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..)

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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: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?

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.