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OSS Developers Provide A Glimmer of Hope
sebFlyte writes "In a recent speech at the ACCU conference in Oxford, software design guru James Coplein said that unless consumers start demanding more and putting up with less crap from software firms, the quality of proprietary software would keep spiralling down. He was full of praise for open source though, saying 'The complementary, independent, selfless acts of thousands of individuals can address system problems -- there are thousands of people making the system stronger.'"
> unless consumers start demanding more and putting up with
> less crap from software firms, the quality of proprietary
> software would keep spiralling down.
I don't think it has far "down" to go. People are too used to the rubbish they've not only been served with currently at home, school or work, but they've grown up with bad software and expect it as a part of normality. If the machine crashes in the middle of something people are trained now not to get angry at it - it's expected. If it gets infested with spyware then it's running slow and needs fixing by a tech, or reinstalling by some techier users. If their internet drops out multiple times a day, they just re-dial or wait for their DSL/cable to come up again.
People are adaptable, and can get used to anything - and quickly, if they don't know better. Many software vendors take advantage of that.
For those not in the know like me. He is/was a researcher at bell labs and worked on all things related to the activity of developing software.
Apart from the areas where there is no competition, the quality of software is pretty good. Even Windows has become fairly stable since Linux showed up.
The reason Free software appeals to me is simply that I don't have to agree to hand over my first born son to use it. I'd like it if consumers would get a bit more assertive over the stringent and really quite unfair licencing terms. Then we can worry about quality.
I've been reading today about Iterative and Increment Design (IID) which is based around the principle of breaking a major project up into smaller iterations (of say 1-6 weeks) and at the end of each of these, integrating all the code and demonstrating it to the customer, whose feedback is used to adapt the product development in order to eventually end up with a final release which is useful.
It can even be taken as far as evolutionary delivery, which requires that the software be released into the market, and the feedback from that used to decide what will be in the next release. The time scales of this are much shorter than say, Apple releasing Panther and then Tiger, so not to be mixed up with major product releases.
I only wonder whether the success of Linux as a household brand is compromised by the fact that non-proprietory software does not follow IID and hence doesn't actually deliver what is the customer wants, but in fact what the developers think the customer wants. I know that Microsoft are very much for beta testing on thousands of individuals which is a step closer to this, but from the serious delays in Longhorn, it's also true that maybe they have missed the point as well.
There's no doubt the functionality is there in Linux as the guy mentions but I'm not so sure that the customer really fits into Linux like is required when moving beyond the waterfall model...
A really good piece of software will tend to get that way through the work of experienced and talented individuals.
So the question devolves to one of, "Where do these experienced and talented individuals tend to end up?"
In my experience they tend to be over in the corner banging their heads against the wall.
KFG
OSS is better than yada yada yada. I am perfectly happy to pay for several commercial development tools because they are far superior in terms of quality, functionality and performance than anything I have seen from OSS. When the OSS offering is better I use that.
Rather ironically the lie to the OSS is always better is provided by the recent Bitkeeper kerfuffle. Linus choose Bitkeeper because for him it was the best tool for the job. The zealots moan about it but do nothing so 2 years later when politics interfere there is still no superior OSS alternative, let alone a comparable one.
Lets just focus on letting the user choose the product that suits them best and let them get on with it.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
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