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FOSS Is Not Free if It's Not Free From Complexity
A reader writes:"This article argues that freedom from complexity is an essential part of the first FOSS freedom - the freedom to run a program. Freedom to run means nothing if the exercise of such right excludes people who do not possess high technical knowledge or advanced skills sets. Without the guarantee of "ease of use", the freedom to run FOSS for most users is a hollow promise. " (My own bias ensues here): I think that there are some valuable points in here; what good is a good if it cannot be used, but OTOH this argument seems simplistic.
The argument is not simplistic, it just has freedom from complexity! : )
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
1) The author talks about 'complexity', but all software is complex, the number of people who understand the countless abstraction layers that exist in a typical piece of modern software can be counted on one hand (a closed fist). I suspect by complexity, the author means usability
2) Usability is not specifically an F/OSS problem - it is a software problem. There's a lot of crap software out there, that the vast majority of people never see (because it costs money). However, many people do see free / oss as it's (generally) availalbe free of charge.
I do take the authors point that for a user to effectively maintain their freedom, free software must be usable.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Do one thing and do it well? Modular archetecture rather than giant monolithic design is why *nix has been successful.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Has this guy ever installed Windows XP on a new bare computer? I don't think so... The first thing I have to do is to go and hunt for the diverse drivers for nearly every device that it has. Graphics, sound, wireless,....
Linux often supports everything out of the box, and what is not supported is, ehm... simply not supported because the specs of the devices are not available and thus the developpers that want to develop the drivers have to resort to reverse-engineering.
Sure, application installation is "harder" in a Linux environment, because it doesn't follow the "double-click-on-that-icon-and-press-next-next-nex t-finish" or even worse "insert-cd-and-automatically-run-a-program-that-mi ght-damage-your-computer" (see Sony Rootkit on Audio CD's...)
If we want it that easy, we have only one way to go, and that is the Apple way: drag an application in the "Application" folder and that is all you got to do for installation. The Windows way is actually not what you want...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Seems to me that any technophobe who wants a FOSS app simplified or wants it to run it on Windows is free to pay the developer of his or her choice to make the port. If the changes are any good they'll probably even be accepted upstream.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Well, we can't mod stories yet, but if we could, you should.
All too often, the people "open sourcing" their software are the same ones who have this elitist attitude of "if you don't have enough time to gather reams of knowledge, don't bother hoping to understand the source". Honestly -- how many of you would be capable of knowing where to add code to GIMP if you wanted to add your own image manipulation/comparison algorithm?
For me, even though I know C++, most C++ FOSS source code might as well be in binary. Once I wanted to adapt an open source word processor to suit my needs, and there's no way I would ever hope to do with an existing FOSS program.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Trying to simplify publishing until it is nonexistent.
If you compare TeX to Word you will see that TeX implements desktop publishing whereas Word implements something which the average user can only write letters with.
How does giving away free (as in beer) software to unskilled, disinterested Joe Sixpack types benefit the community? What can we reasonably expect them to contribute? When was the last time your Aunt Mabel filed a bug report?
This isn't the sig you're looking for... Move along.
Lawn or MS code? Hmmm. I think i'd rather deal with the lawn.
This guy's the limit!
...but he isn't taking it far enough! He's arguing all this using this complicated written language stuff, which denies the contents to illiterates. If you can't do everything with pretty pictures it's not free! As a result the entire resources of the FOSS community shoulod be diverted to implementing a free version of Microsoft Bob!
Cut to a sign saying 'How to do it'. Music. Pull out to reveal a 'Blue Peter' type set. Sitting casually on the edge of a dais are three presenters in sweaters - Noel, Jackie and Alan - plus a large bloodhound.
Alan: Hello.
Noel: Hello.
Alan: Well, last week we showed you how to become a gynaecologist. And this week on 'How to do it' we're going to show you how to play the flute, how to split an atom, how to construct a box girder bridge, how to irrigate the Sahara Desert and make vast new areas of land cultivatable, but first, here's Jackie to tell you all how to rid the world of all known diseases.
Jackie: Hello, Alan.
Alan: Hello, Jackie.
Jackie: Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again.
Alan: Thanks, Jackie. Great idea. How to play the flute. (picking up a flute) Well here we are. You blow there and you move your fingers up and down here.
Noel: Great, great, Alan. Well, next week we'll be showing you how black and white people can live together in peace and harmony, and Alan will be over in Moscow showing us how to reconcile the Russians and the Chinese. So, until next week, cheerio.
Alan: Bye.
Jackie: Bye.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Normally, I'd be a little put off by what amounts to an opinion piece bya lawyer on open source, but there are good points:
Current FOSS operating systems (OS) are targeted mainly at geeks, hackers and other technically skilled developers and users. While there have been some progress in making the installation and use of FOSS OSes like Ubuntu easier and simpler, they still do not have the "click-click-click" ease of installation of popular proprietary OSes like Windows XP or Mac OS X. In addition, even after one successfully installs a FOSS OS on a computer, a user will typically have to deal with issues like lack of drivers, incompatibility with third party devices or difficulty in installing new programs or software packages. A normal user wants everything to work out-of-the-box [emphasis mine]. This is especially true in developing countries where a computer costs more than a month's salary. Since a computer is a major purchase, it's usefulness and usability should be present at the moment a user turns on his or her computer. People are not interested in (in fact, most are adverse to) messing around with, tinkering or hacking a program - the second, third and fourth software freedoms.
It goes back to the whole idea of Linux as an everyday operating system. Anyone who is not a geek, i.e. most of the population, is not going to adopt something that isn't easy to operate. I mean, there's no reason to make a Windows-like GUI for Linux unless you want people to actually think of Linux as an alternative to Windows. And while you might impress the average user with a Windows-like look and feel, unless it's just as easy to use out of the box as their Windows PC is now, there will be no great swell of converts.
I've said it before: Linux's popularity depends on what it wants to be. If it wants to be the OS of geeks and hackers and multi-million dollar corporations, so be it. If Linux (or any of its derivatives) wish to compete against Windows for market share, there has to be a shift in thinking, away from kernel-centric, gizmos-and-gadgets way of thinking to the "what would a user want to do" mindset.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Certainly software should never be unnecessarily complex; that's just good design. But it will (and should) never be the case that all software is easily usable by everybody. You could use the same logic to proclaim that all bicycles should have training wheels, so that they're rideable by people with no biking experience. Or that all musical compositions should be simple enough to be played by non-musicians.
Lets not pursue simplicity to the point of dumbing everything down. If I wanted that, I'd be using Windows.
The entire article hinges on this point:
which is simply wrong. The author acknowledges that "OSes like Ubuntu" are easy to use but dings them on the installation process relative to Windows XP. (S/)He has clearly never installed XP from scratch. That's reflected again in his dig about driver problems...
Those two concerns are addressed by buying a machine with a pre-installed OS and using that. He never argues why you should buy a machine pre-installed with Windows. He also misses the point that all users are, of course, free to learn the advanced technical skills that are dismissed in this column. And the point that such self improvement is much more accessible when the developers of the software in use have preserved the freedoms the author derides as only useful for tinkering that real people have no interest in.
.sig: file not found
Ah, the eternal conflict between those who define freedom as the absence of external limitations and those who define it simply as ability without regard to resources. "I am required to breathe oxygen in order to survive; therefore I am not free."
Fuck Slashdot
I think the author is missing one of the points. It's not necessary to be usable for endusers to be good for them.
For example; I work for a semi-large dental office. 3 offices, 100+ employees. Each and everyone of those employees benefit from OSS, even if they don't know it. From the spam being kept out of their mail boxes, to email being delivered all together, to the IM network, not to mention the file server. I won't even go into how the phones are handled.
I am the only one ( on the payroll ) that knows how any of this works, and that benefits at least 100+ people ( not to mention the secondary effects of such a setup ). That's the true power of opensource software.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
What a rubbish statement. Take 3d for example. An open source 3d program is free, grreat and at this point is called Blender. But 3D ain't simple, it ain't easy. It's gonna take a couple of days to figure out if you've done nothing in that direction. So for any newb, it's gonna be very complex. Hell, certain aspects can be complex for non-newbs.
But to call Blender non-free 'cause it's a complex piece of software? That's a very stupid thing to say.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Bias? On Slashdot! This simply won't stand!
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
I have installed a few machines recently and not once did I have to hunt down drivers to have a functional machine.
Now there are cases where there are newer drivers that I could go get should I need them but they are not required.
The big difference between installing Linux versus XP?
If I need drivers they most likely exist for XP.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
No more blog entries please.
And anyway, there is already a "FOSS OS that is as easy to install and use as any proprietary OS", it's called OpenSUSE. It's the easiest thing I've ever used in my life, though it was bloaty and I eventually got sick of it and came back to Slackware.
I've recently been thinking about this from the point of view of an aspiring developer. You can promise people they can do whatever they like with the code until you go blue in the face, but the freedom to edit code is useless when people lack the required resources and/or skills to do so. And people wonder why the "free as in speech" argument isn't catching on when their code is unworkable. And I'm not just talking about lack of programming skill here, the second biggest problem I've encountered is cross-compiler hell.
Ease of use is a positive "right". For such a "right" to exist, FOSS programmers no longer have the right to voluntarily work as much as they want. This is a general principle of positive "rights": by granting the positive "right", you force someone else to work.
Positive "rights" are -- in general -- bad things.
Math is too hard! Until the mathematicians make it more usable, it will never gain acceptance in the Real World(TM).
Here's my summary of TFA:
"Somebody needs to do everything for me, including all of my thinking."
Move alone everyone. There is nothing to see here.
I would tend to say that complexity isn't a downfall in FOSS. Documentation can help many end users deal with complex software functions, even if they do not possess the knowledge of how the functions work.
The arguement TFA provides seems to come up fairly often, as it was already here awhile ago.
...seems misspelled.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I'm free to swim to Europe, that doesn't mean I can. I'm also free to build a formula one vehicle, but that doesn't mean I know how, or have the resources to do it.
I think this author has a strange meaning of the word "free". "Free" has nothing to do with the credentials of the user - if they want to use the software they're free to learn how to.
There are a lot of elements in a successful software product that have little to do with code. In addition to the programmers, you have system administrators, testers, designers, biz development and/or sales, marketers, project managers, copy writers, assistants, etc.
The free software process has the programmer part pretty well handled, but is naturally lousy at everything else. Namely, because that stuff is boring, costs money, or just isn't something any normal person does for free.
Naturally, its biggest market will be other technical types. Going from free software project to shrinkwrap generally usable software product is a much taller order.
Maybe part of the problem is that usability/ease-of-use or ease of installation is not the foremost in the geek's book of "software-virtues"? Maybe geeks derive a certain pride in going to a lower level and solving certain problems themselves (for example maintaining different versions of the Python Interpreter since various OSS work with different versions)? In my view, this is NOT a good thing for the future of OSS. If OSS is to break the bounds of the limited community of tech-savvy personnel, we have to put a lot of effort into usability, ease of installation, solving version conflicts automatically. Programs like apt-get and rpm are an example of what can be achieved. I think this will be key in the imminent future for turning the balance for desktop users from OSs such as Windows to Open Source OSs.
Life is about being a Phoenix!
If Windows is so easy to install, why do people pay me to install it for them? I conclude the author has never installed a retail version of Windows on a generic computer, but is basing his opinion on experience with OEM 'restore' discs. This myth rates right up there with the 'Windows is more intuitive and easier to use' silliness. I've had the opportunity to expose first time users to Windows and Linux, and in my experience, new users learn Linux just as easily as Windows. Please someone tell me what is 'intuitive' about double clicking, as just one of many examples. Many old folks have a real problem with holding the mouse still long enough to manage the task. Put someone who learned to single-click in front of a double click box, and they wonder why the computer won't work. That's intuitive?
I don't agree with his argument but it's not because he's confused
My work here is dung.
"Freedom to run a program means guaranteeing to an ordinary user that he or she will be able to run and use a program productively and free from complexity. What is the worth of freedom if it cannot be enjoyed by everyone?"
Productivity and complexity are one thing, freedom is another. I'm not even sure of the purpose of this entire article. Huh? Let's not mix human rights around the world with the choice of which Operating System my 65 year old father uses at home. That seems like what the last sentence is saying --> "What is the worth of freedom if it cannot be enjoyed by everyone?" Is this an article about running software on a computer?
Even this push into Windows software does not bring with it the types of issues you describe, as the author is discussing relatively mature programs.
To summarize TFA's point: Encourage more OSS on Windows, so that when the OSS operating systems are stupid simple, the transition will be transparent to the user. Everything will just work.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This is like saying the right to Health Care is only useful to those people who are doctors.
The 'freedom' of free software can be asserted by non-technical people/organizations. If my dentist uses some open source piece of software to run his client and medical record database, he can always hire a comptetent consultant to fix or modify something for him - in this sense it is no different than his plumbing, x-ray machine, and other tools in his office. If he uses a closed-source product to do this, there is every chance that his data will be locked in a format he won't be able to use if the company that owns that software goes out of business.
I rather like using an O/S that only a few people have the knowledge to use... as it means fewer stupid questions.
I would like to see more people that are skilled in computers using Linux... not people who do not understand how things work under the hood of a computer.
Also, there is such a thing as over-simplification, and then it will loose all the power that drew me to the O/S in the first place. That is one of the reasons I do not use Windows.
At any rate, I like Linux on my desktop, and would not use anything else; but it really shows its power on my web and mail servers (that most people do not have to use).
And thank goodness it is so easy for the average user to edit registry settings in Windows. That's a snap for many people.
The only paid software that hands-down beats its FOSS rival is Photoshop. In most cases they either level-peg (office) or underperform (web server).
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Freedom to run means nothing if the exercise of such right excludes people who do not possess high technical knowledge or advanced skills sets.
All the freedoms provided by FOSS are accessible by the freedom to learn. Case dismissed!
I think FOSS is free no matter how hard it is to use. Don't confuse a person's rights with bad software design practices.
"Obscenity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker." - cloak42
Freedom from unnecessary complexity that results from lack of consideration for the user audience, certainly.
But computers and non-trivial computer applications are necessarily complex, and there is a limit to how much the problem in question can be simplified and still have a useful and correct and usable solution. Freedom from the complexity inherent in the problem you are trying to solve is not freedom at all - you are inescapably bound by the limits that the person simplifying the problem decided to use, and you are limited to that person's conception of the problem and proper solution, even if they are suboptimal, incorrect or even stupid.
The conscious attempt to hide all complexity away from the lowest common denominator user is as much a cause of the problems with Microsoft's products as are their coding and competitive practices. Let us (the FOSS community) not fall into the same trap, of oversimplifying an inherently complex situation.
A better solution to the problem of complexity is to follow the Unix design philosophy - design and build simple, small tools that do one thing and do it very well, and that can be connected in various ways to solve more complex problems, including those that the original designer couldn't foresee.
As for the focus of this article, which seems to be the OS rather than any application in particular, this article also seems to willfully ignore the state of current Linux distributions - they are "click,click,click" to install. They are look-at-a-list-of-FOSS-apps, one-click-to-install (or, at worst, type a simple command to install). And they do support out-of-the-box a huge list of hardware options.
Freedom from thought and decision-making is not freedom, it is slavery. I, for one, do not choose to be a slave to Microsoft.
So if this catchy phrase takes off, free software will use three separate definitions of the word free - no price, freedom and not containing something. Yeah, that should make things clearer.
Can you really engineer freedom from stupidity? If you are trapped in the prison of your own mind no one can help you (and so we all are, but some cells are bigger than others)
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
However, it seems that wider adoption of FOSS can be achieved if greater development effort is focused on the first freedom - the freedom to run.
Ultimately, I don't find FOSS exists for the sake of adoption. I don't think I need to explain this at all considering the venue, but the purpose of FOSS is freedom. Freedom from a single entity to control your "computational destiny." With FOSS, you don't have to be chained to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. The only chain you are bound to is your own motivation for freedom. If you have no desire to free yourself from your own chain then you don't deserve the freedom.
If there's ever an example of exactly what I mean then just look at the state of freedoms in the US. Everywhere you look the government is eroding freedoms (mostly in the name of anti-terrorism)...and very few people are fighting it. Ney, some are even fighting for the erosion.
So if in 10 years the Americans have no freedoms: speak against the president -> go to jail; purchase a gun -> summarily executed; try to overthrow a tyrannical government (this is not a freedom but a right) -> public execution alla William Wallace style; run an underground newspaper -> go to jail; etc. etc. If that happens and the public does nothing to stop it, then can you say they deserve those freedoms.
Freedom isn't a free, you have to earn it. With FOSS, today, it requires knowledge. Most importantly that knowledge is free to acquire. The only thing stopping people for acquiring it is themselves.
The only reason freedoms & rights exist is thanks to our forefathers. Ignoring their work and sacrifice by taking it all for granted and not fighting anyone that wishes to get rid of them dissolves your entitlement to said freedoms and rights.
So, while I completely disagree that "freedom to run means freedom from complexity" (as if the political sphere is any easier) I will agree that "ease of use" will increase adoption. I would have much more enjoyed the blogging if the author hadn't used a tenant to FOSS as a rationale for marketing.
Speaking of which, I don't recall reading the FOSS constitution that listed the given four freedoms (run, study, modify, redistribute). If you really have "the freedom" then you can define your own set of freedoms that define FOSS. In this author's case, "freedom from complexity" is #5 but I have the freedom to not add that one to my list!
:wq
on [b]FREE[/b] software.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Even if the author seems a tad ignorant on some levels, I'd have to agree that FOSS has a way to go to get converts.
I've been dabbling in Ubuntu all week, I'm not a total n00b, but I'd rip my own eyes out if I was. It has NOT been easy.
It's getting better, but it's still a long way. There should be a point and click install option for 90% of the things a n00b might want to do. For example installing a nintendo/snes/n64 emulator, and then finding the roms to run in it.
Try doing THAT in ubuntu vs. windows, and tell me FOSS is way ahead on this. It's just not. There are many other examples as well, but this one is definitely appropriate.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
it took me a week to compile firefox on my "standard" windows xp box, and the by-far-the-best online guide i found (http://pryan.org/firefox/TierMann/page/building/p ackages.html) after hammering google and the mozilla forums was out of date (referred to "microsoft sdk" instead of "microsoft platform sdk" thus messing up a lot of paths in the provided examples) still required tinkering (my activeperl installation conflicted with the cygwin perl, why i needed perl to compile a C++ app was not explained) and was not complete (a linker lib was missing, which i eventually found at the bottom of a swiss web page) a linker error occurred, which required a manual change in the source code) and the MOZ_CONFIG_BOOBAA system was never fully explained and i think i got a working config by pure happy chance.
% 20install%20the%20free%20Microsoft%20Visual%20C.ht m
/* Comment it
and just to prove it this is the content of my c:/mozilla/setup/notestoself.txt
use: c:/mozilla instead of c:/home
(the compile path will then be c:/mozilla/mozilla !)
the "mozconfig" file needs to go in c:/mozilla/mozilla
some files are "missing" from the vc++ toolkit, namely lib.exe and supporting dlls, these can, bizzarely be snatched from the platform sdk's 64bit bin directory
make sure the INCLUDE paths point to "microsoft platform sdk/include" and not "microsoft sdk/whatever"
checkout:
make -f client.mk checkout MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser
build:
make -f client.mk build
download msvcprt.lib from here:
http://root.cern.ch/root/Procedure/Procedure%20to
LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'atlthunk.lib'
Change AllocStdCallThunk and FreeStdCallThunk at line 287 of PSDK/include/atl/atlbase.h to the new macros:
PVOID __stdcall __AllocStdCallThunk(VOID);
VOID __stdcall __FreeStdCallThunk(PVOID);
#define AllocStdCallThunk() __AllocStdCallThunk()
#define FreeStdCallThunk(p) __FreeStdCallThunk(p)
#pragma comment(lib, "atlthunk.lib")
*/
#define AllocStdCallThunk() HeapAlloc(GetProcessHeap(),
0, sizeof(_stdcallthunk))
#define FreeStdCallThunk(p) HeapFree(GetProcessHeap(), 0, p)
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Why don't 08/15-users exercise their freedom of choice and stick to windows if they can't handle anything else?
There's freindly, and there's trying to hide the complexity of the system under fluffy cotton wool. The latter approach is used by Windows and it can be infuriating. A system that throws away the useful diagnostics information about why it is going wrong and wraps it up in some cuddly message is useless to the person who has a chance of understanding the detail and doing something about it. Fluffy cotton wool is not the way to go.
People accept complexity in other devices, but for some reason expect computers to take away the need to think.
One of the main problems I've seen with several FOSS projects is poor documentation. How many of us have tried to use some piece of software, run into problems, tried to see what went wrong in the documentation, and, lo and behold, the documentation is 2, maybe 3 versions out of date, and filled with sections that only contain "Need to be added." To me, this is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of being free from complexity. Personally, I think that all Software Engineers/Computer Scientists, and maybe all engineers/scientists, should spend time learning how to write GOOD documentation, and in the case of FOSS programs designed to be used by desktop users, this documentation should be easily readable by Joe Schmuck.
FOSS is free .... from the vast majority of user's desktops .... and if it doesn't get easier to use, it'll stay that way.
I may have had to hunt for a driver or two in XP, but generally it is far more likely that an XP driver exists.
and getting my sound card working in Ubuntu.... I've never experienced anything that was that difficult in XP.
...it's not free unless it's free from unreasonable design restrictions, both towards being too complex *and* towards being too simple? Freedom means that both the users should be free to use it as they please (e.g. download it, run it, look at the source, etc.) and that the developers should be free to develop it as they please (e.g. add the functionality *they* want, make it what they want it to be, etc.). If you don't like what the developers are doing, guess what: it's free and open source, so go make a for-dummies fork or something. Don't boss around the developers and impinge on *their* freedom, as that's part of the FOSS philosophy too.
One of the great things about FOSS is that it is driven by lots of individuals all of whom want something a bit different. This may be a weakness in the eyes of the marketing types, but it is a strength in many other ways. So, "Linux" doesn't want anything (how can it, its a nebulous kind of entity at best), but all those who use and work on Linux have individual wants and ideas and it is the differences in all of these that keeps Linux (and FOSS) strong and interesting.
I mean, like 75% of slashdot readers have written patches for the kernel, right? My 10 year-old son just started using Debian, and he's already written a few drivers for ATI cards (with a bit of reverse engineering, of course). He should be done in a day or so.
Why is he so driven? I guess he's just the regular FOSS user. Also, he was jealous that his 12-year old sister is a developer for OpenBSD and has already had over 10,000 lines of her code merged into the source tree. My boy won't feel the score is even until he's kicked the HURD kernel up out of beta.
Myself? I'm getting the Linux kernel ready for the next generation of 128-bit CPUs. That's in my spare time, when I'm not checking over particle physics calculations done recently at the CERN and Fermilab... another pasttime of mine.
But 9-5, I'm a janitor for the local elementary school.
Although all of this tends to gloss over the existence of distros like Mandrake and Ubuntu which are more than a match for Windows for anything except 3rd party vendor support.
The problem with this statement is that many residential and business end users buy computers for their third-party vendor support. They buy whatever computer and whatever operating system will run the application or peripheral that they are considering.
...software generally shouldn't be any more complex than it needs to be. This is where many applications either get confused or fall over completely: they could make things easier with no loss of flexibility, but don't. Poor documentation, poor interfaces (or badly-named or hidden or arcane parameters for command line tools), the list goes on and on. Things which could be fixed, but aren't.
Some software needs to be complicated, but no software should ever be *too* complicated for the required purpose or intended users.
Game dev and music blog
The simplest and most effective way to increase FOSS use and adoption now is to push for the adoption by ordinary users, not of FOSS OSes
Which is no longer true. You can't give the user ease of use on a second rate and non free platform. It will always be harder to play Bill Gate's game on Windoze than it is to take advantage of free software on your own. Yet, people have done so with great success, but the free software world is now easier.
The best way to increase software freedom is to free vendors and users from Microsoft's dominance. When users see the technical community stand up for itself and say, "this is the best software for you on technical and moral grounds," people will believe it is so. Every time you service Windows, you say the opposite. It is now easier to set up free software and migrate users than it is to maintain Windoze ports and without those ports, the platform itself will continue to wither and die. Vendors are already breaking free, which is why you see so many Linux ports and drivers now. Keep sending the right message.
For free OS set up, give them Mepis, one of the easiest to run and install Linux distributions. It runs live with an "Install Me" button on the desktop, which walks the user through a GUI dual boot install. With that one set up the user gets all of the goodies, OO, Firefox, KDE, GIMP, and so on.
With things that easy, why bother with harder stuff? Installing each of those programs onto Windoze is actually more difficult, and that difficulty is compounded by the inherent instability and malice of the platform. Bill Gates breaks what he does not like in one way or another. When that happens, the user gets a bad impression of free software as "unofficial", "non-standard" and "unsupported." The "freedom from complexity" can not really be given on a non free platform.
The desirability of the OpenCD just goes to show what a weak platform Windows is to begin with. Out of the box, Windows is feature poor. You have to spend hundreds of dollars or make unauthorized copies and risk BSA raids to get what the OpenCD provides for free.
I have to admire the people who port to Windows, but it's not really the best way to give people freedom. They go through a lot of hard work to bring some comfort to Windows users. The choices and programs they bring to such users do show people that better things exist. Overall, the user is better off just using free software from the very beginning. You know what platform you use and why. What's easier for you and better for you really is better for others too. The people you help deserve to hear it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There is an easy solution, and that is to put our trust into the various MegaCorp®'s to produce reliable, honest, and functional software. This model has proven not to deliver on most of these fronts.
The other solution will be to suck it up, run a free OS, and spend 8 hours learning how to run an "alien" OS instead of spending them cleaning spyware/malware/viruses.
It would be nice if we could have the best of both worlds, but unfortunately "better performance" rarely goes hand in hand with "less work".
A median residential end user is likely to define "complexity" as what more careful writers would call "complexity exposed to the end user". This does result in lack of usability.
FOSS offers something for everyone and for the author to criticise FOSS for not catering to the great unwashed is grossly unfair. There are certain pieces of end user FOSS, such as the Mozilla projects, that are trying to develop marketshare which means that they have to be idiot friendly to a certain degree. There are other pieces of FOSS that have marketshare, but are not idiot friendly, such as Apache. There are also major FOSS projects that are complex and well documented, such as Samba, that will scare the bejesus out of the average CompUSA customer. There are even major FOSS projects that are complex and well documented, such as Sendmail, that many people don't know how it works. FOSS was intended to create tools, it was never intended that all FOSS would be understood or be usable by everybody.
Should open source software have more usable interfaces? Of course. For years, to change your profile in gaim you had to use the "Protocol Actions" submenu, which I understand, and which I'm sure the developer understood, but is that supposed to be meaningful to a typical AIM user? Should open source software, where possible, provide documentation and help educate users? Sure. The amount of OSS that just has a page saying "somebody should update the documentation for the latest version," or where most of the features are still poorly documented or undocumented entirely, is astronomical.
Are any of these examples issues of "freedom?" Nope. The article is being a little silly about its use of the word. But hey, it was still good enough to get a link from slashdot...
I am the man with no sig!
Has this guy ever installed Windows XP on a new bare computer? I don't think so... The first thing I have to do is to go and hunt for the diverse drivers for nearly every device that it has. Graphics, sound, wireless,....
At least the CDs for devices manufactured since 2000 come with Windows 2000/XP compatible drivers. You don't get a Linux driver on the CD bundled with most PC peripherals intended for residential or administrative office use.
Make something easy to use is a *very* complicated task, just ask Apple and Msft.
However, this is like the current US definition of 'freedom', which basically means 'rich', or 'economic freedom', and most Americans are all too ready and willing to give up other necessary freedoms, and endure an ever tightning set of rules and regulations and taxes and litigation, unemployment, illegal immigration, outsourcing, etc etc etc - all at the behest of the landed gentry to keep their business and THEIR economic freedom, even if it means enslaving others.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Freedom to drive a car means nothing if the exercise of such right excludes people who do not possess hand/eye coordination or the financial means to purchase a vehicle.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I have made or attempted to make many modifications over the years:
- configured several Linuxes to run on laptops
- modified the way SpamAssassin self-trains
- a hack to make "IE view" work with Firefox/Linux/Wine
- [tried] to hook into Mozilla's spam filter interface
(a) to replace the filter
(b) to drive the filter with a test script
[successfully downloaded and built the 70MB source
and experimented but found the interfaces impenetrable]
- various other hacks and patches to dozens of bits
of software: drivers, utilities, printer configs,
dialup scripts, etc.
I suceeded on most but I have no viable way to give what
I've learned back to the open source community. Why? The development tools and/or controlling clique are impenetrable. There's no easy plugin or source patch that I can communicate to others -- I either have to join the development community and learn its tools and culture or fork or resort to an informal "howto" web page. These "howto" pages are replicated over and over and over.
I have tried to give back this info via the various community forums (all of which are different and require a fair amount of effort to participate in) and have largely been met with "you're not one of us so your ideas can't be any good." My aim is to make useful hacks not to spend my time arguing about why they're useful. So I end up simply posting my ideas to the 'net where sophisticated searchers/hackers may be able to take advantage of them. But they're no help at all to "joe user."
If we had a lightweight but mechanical way of capturing the hacks that people do to software to make it work on their configuration (especially if their configuration is identical to that of thousands of other users) we'd be better off.
But that requires an architectural change, and a mindset change of the developers. I don't want to join their club in order to use and adapt free software any more than I want to fork over a license fee.
- "People aren't really free, unless they are free to live their lives the way I think they should be able to live them."
- "Such-and-such isn't fair, because it doesn't do X, which it must do in order to fit my definition of fair."
- "There can be no justice without XYZ."
- "Because ABC does QPR, they are fascists"
- "Because ABC won't do JKL, they are fascists"
Here's another one for you: "People who assert their own biased opinion as a redefinition of a commonly used term are, in my opinon, idiots, and I refuse to read the opinions of people I think are idiots."I don't think the author is clear on what the free in free/open source software means. Free as in you don't pay money for it. End of sentence. Not free as in you're free to remain oblivious as to what exactly its doing to your computer.
Yes, it can be tough to get your head around some issues like installation/upgrades, but all you need is half a brain and the desire to learn.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
My Linux boxes are free in the sense that I can hire anyone I want to help me with them, or I can get a book from O'Reilly Media, and do it myself.
Freedom doesn't mean that no effort/expense is required. It only means that the effort won't be artificially impeded.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Developers of the majority of free and open source software do not generally make their software accessible to the end user because most free and open software consists of libraries and platforms intended for other developers of both free and commercial software. The task falls to successive generations of developers to build applications for end users on top of these libraries and platforms. Other than those libraries licensed under the GPL, both commercial and free software and services benefit directly from free and open source software.
Vast numbers of both commercial and free Web sites run on Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, Ruby on Rails, and other free and open source software. The most advanced and user-friendly operating system, Mac OS, runs on top of a free and open source BSD subsystem. I do not think it appropriate to measure the success and contribution of free and open source software to the end user on the basis of free and open source client application installations alone.
For those free and open source applications that end users could use directly, you must understand the development process to in turn understand why most free and open software does not have simple ergonomic interfaces. Finishing off the final presentation details that would simplify the interface and make it an enjoyable experience for the end user can take as long or longer than all the other development put into the application. Putting the final touches on a user interface consists of very difficult and tedious work that will not appeal to many programmers who want to focus on the algorithms and big logical challenges in the guts of the program. To do it well also requires some creative resources and not many free creative resources exist.
On the issue of simplicity over complexity, all software would benefit from careful attention to making things as simple as possible. I do not think free and open source software has a monopoly on overly complex interfaces. The vast of majority of both commercial and open applications would benefit from user interface simplification. If free and open source software is not free because of the cost of complexity, most commercial software by comparison merely adds a surcharge on top of the cost of the complexity.
Ummmm... what? This is a bit bad example. I've been using word processors since WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was shit hot. I sat in front of StarOffice back in day (version 4, I think) and the only thing that puzzled me - for mere couple of minutes, tops! - was the weird desktop thing (which was removed in OpenOffice.org; trust me, if you've only used OO.o, do yourself a favor and never learn what contraption this sad piece of history was). If you've used one word processor, you know how to use them all, and changing from one word processor to another is never going to be painful at all. At least not after the first week.
OpenOffice.org Writer doesn't look and work like Word, that's true. Instead, it looks and works like any other word processing program.
All I'm saying is OO.o is not the archetypical awful open source GUI thing. It's not confusing people. I've seen quite a few people who aren't very technical and have switched to AbiWord and OpenOffice.org Writer, and not looked back.
Now MythTV, on the other hand - if you really need to look at the documentation to watch TV...
I wasn't able to install XP on my notepad PC without a driver hunt... and then the Intel wireless driver didn't work right anyway. After wasting a few hours I loaded Ubuntu "Breezy Badger" and everything just worked.
Your anecdotal evidence, like mine (which is entirely true, by the way - all I left out was a painful attempt to use Fedora C5) says more about the hardware in question than it does about the software.
If your hardware is supported well by WinXP, you get the experience you had. If your hardware is supported by some other OS, same thing... this is not rocket science, folks. When you buy your hardware, make sure it is well supported on the OS you require for running your apps.
'Cause it's all about the apps. Your computer is for running apps.
..."free" means "free to do with it what you want" not "free custom design to fit your needs". I think I'll paraphrase Linus when he said something to the effect of "I build Linux for the purpose of building Linux, if it replaces Windows that would be entirely coincidental." I think that goes for most OSS software except a few commercially funded ventures and idealistic communities - "I build OSS for my purposes, if it works for you that would be entirely coincidental."
If I were to rank people, I'd say:
1) Those who appriciate OSS and their developers
2) Those who never say thank you, but nag about their pet bugs
3) Those who expect you to bend over and design your software to fit their needs
I think OSS is doing what one might call "englightened self-interest". If I make my program usable to most geeks, the same geeks will make their apps usable for me. Being newbie-friendly is nice but even in OSS I think most ask "What's in it for me?". The article doesn't provide anything to support that, except that "It would be nice if..."
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Please send a cheque for £29.99 to 123 fake street.
And there's the rub for for any argument of simplicity. If you have to go mucking about the BIOS, it's not simple for any OS.
You need an OS distro to run applications. Each distro has its own way of installing.
If what you claim is true, then this is part of why Linux based operating systems won' get much support from hardware manufacturers. If one has to support each GNU/Linux distribution separately, this is much more work than supporting Windows XP and Mac OS X.
Provided you use software from the repository (which is huge, btw, 18,000 packages or something),
Is there an easy way for manufacturers to get their drivers into a major repository or for users to import a repository from a CD?
On other distros, the install methods are different, but not necessissiarily any harder.
A package for each of a dozen Free distros is harder for the manufacturer to support than a package for each of two distros (Windows and Mac OS X).
If it weren't for some of the complexities of FOSS, I wouldn't know half of what I do know about Linux.
Being a ppc-linux user for the last 3 years has forced me to overcome many FOSS complexities in order to be a user of the software on a platform that its authors didn't intend. If it hadn't been free I wouldn't be(using it).
You hit the nail on the head. That's the main problem with OSS. Either it's shitty software that requires tons of support, in which case it's not necessarily any cheaper or better than proprietary stuff, or it's so easy to use, that there's no way to make money off of it. The only OSS we use is VNC because it works. I certainly have no need to ever pay anybody for VNC, and I never will. Anything else I've tried has been so convoluted that it ended up being grossly more expensive than something shrink-wrapped and closed source.
This goes back to what Jamie Zawinski said back in 1998. "Linux is only free if your time has no value." Sadly, years later it still holds true.
I agree completely.
open source is the best way
Major video card makers can't just snap their fingers and give the community enough information to develop drivers. You have to realize that most video cards are not entirely the work of one company; they use technology licensed under patent and trade secret law from multiple companies. Video card makers would first have to get permission from all their licensors in order to release valuable trade secrets to the public. This is often way too much work compared to the revenue from supporting Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, which do have stable kernel ABIs for years on end.
"If someone suggests that FOSS needs to be more user friendly, then the answer is that Windows sucks"
That certainly seems to be the consensus. I've always found it interesting that, despite the obvious fact that many people find the use of FOSS to be difficult, rather than listen to these people, the "community" dismisses their observations. Even worse, as you say, is when the "community" develops the opinion that rather than be judged on its own merits, the only useful measure of FOSS, or Linux based distros in particular, is a comparison against Windows.
People are saying that some things are too difficult. Responses that blame other people don't help. Complaining that "Windows is hard too" doesn't help. It might make you feel better, but seriously, what a whiny fanboy response.
Stop comparing something that isn't Windows, and is supposed to be different from Windows, against Windows. If something is too difficult, the fact that it is also difficult on Windows is supposed to make me feel better?
"Well, we know this particular distro has installation issues, and we know that your particular device isn't supported, and we know that documentation is somewhat lacking, but look at how much Windows sucks!"
It's called constructive criticism. Successful people embrace it.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Is the argument oversimplified? Absolutely. But the author still has a rather decent point: People aren't educated about Open Source Software. Unfortunately, what we see is an automatic "It's too hard to install" since it's not preinstalled. Most OSS ports for Windows require downloading 1 file and installing it. Okay, fine, the GIMP requires 2.
4 /18/1941251&tid=78&tid=26.
The point is this: There have been huge strides in terms of ease-of-use for installation and usability all throughout FOSS. Ubuntu is very easy to install, yes, but it is free, so you need to install the codecs. Luckily there are easy to install/run programs out there that do these all for you built by the community. And if you don't like that, Mepis is there, or Xandros, or whatever else you'd like.
The problem isn't that FOSS is hard to use, it's that people are afraid to use it. They don't go into Best Buy and purchase it and bring it home and can call a number on the back of the box when they need help. They're afraid they're getting scammed by "free" software. Seriously. I offered somebody Linux once and he went into this whole tirade about how somebody must be making money off of it and he's not going to be the victim of identity theft or a source of adware, which is what it must be, since it's free. It quite simply comes down to the fact that people just don't understand FOSS. The real challenge is to put FOSS into a very, very, very simple argument that outlines what it is, but doesn't delve into the intricacies of it. By doing so, you'll connect with more people...but only if you promulgate that message.
Let's just hope that there's not a bug in the kernel that will keep it from spreading - http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/0
I have karma to loose, but I still have to say this.
The whole thing seems - again - like whinings of some 10 year old, hysterics of people with less knowledge than a certain task would require, thinking that whining will do any good. You can not circumvent learning, adapting with hysterics. Some people just think it is extraordinarily outrageous when they hear they should learn to use something or need to pick up any new knowledge. They just - really - think everything should be done conforming to their levels. This is just idiotic.
It will never do us - in general - any good if we always aim for a level below the average. If there really are people who can not keep up with the pace, they are not lost: they _can_ _choose_ to use something else that fits their levels of expectations. But saying that a certain product - let it be a Linux distro or else - is not good because they lack the required level of knowledge and are not willing to broaden their skills in order to use it, is not an acceptable argument.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
It is risky to advocate that the energies of FOSS are best concentrated on running open source programs on closed source platforms (like Open Office on Windows). Once DRM gets a grip, the owners of closed source operating systems will be in a position to blacklist any programs they don't like by programming the DRM mechanism to refuse to run them.
Perhaps the writer's concerns are more applicable to the subset known as "desktop Linux". Desktop Linux will not grow and become popular unless it offers users what they want. In this regard, the writer does have a point in that proslytising essays about open source are no substitute for delivering the goods to Joe and Jill. If desktop Linux does not do this, then it won't get used outside of the enthusiast crowd. So long as Linux remains "owned" by its developers, this is always going to be a point of contention.
As for the server, I think it is a different story since this is for technical types and some things are very complex, like it or not. Complexity can still be overdone, I guess, especially when a developer is moved to include every option under the sun. My own bete noir is Exim 4 but fortunately there are alternatives with simpler configuration files, like Postfix.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
What is the source of this attitude that Linux will be a complete failure unless is can overtake Windows as the OS of choice for drooling idiots?
If Linux is unsuitable for the home desktop, then manufacturers of hardware that can potentially be used with both home desktop machines and workstations will choose to create device drivers for the more lucrative Windows home desktop market over the Linux workstation market or the Linux hobbyist desktop market. It appears that a goal of making inroads into the home desktop market is to ensure the continued availability of affordable hardware.
I kinda' thought that this point was self-evident, but somehow, you completely missed it... The point is not that everything has to be useable by 5 year olds. The point is that time=money, and FOSS isn't any cheaper or free-er than regular closed source software if you have to be a geek to use it. I can, already, with my Windows OS, my Intuit software, etc. do whatever I need to do with my PC. If some FOSS comes out to replace anything that I already use on my PC, but I have to turn around and learn some complex stuff to get it to do the same thing that I'm already doing, then it's not really all that free, now is it?
.config files and compiling you'd understand...
I don't know any way that this simple point can be explained any simpler. Maybe if I explained it in terms of
Man, I had a machine that had some weird "Intel" crap in it that Windows didn't have any drivers for. My video was stuck at 16 colour VGA, and my sound and network didn't work. What a peice of crap!
When I'd read the headline, I thought this was going to be a good article. But it completele misses the point it should be making.
What the article should be saying: "FOSS isn't exactly going to help by its main virtue, which is the ability to review the source code, if nobody can understand it. There has even been that recent event encouraging coders to hide mailicious code in harmless-looking code. FOSS's code should be well-written and clear to understand. Although you cannot expect Joe Average to understand OpenOffice's innards, the barrier for him to come to an understanding should be as low as possible."
What the article is saying: "ZOMFG, Leenux is 2 l33t 4 me, make it clicky-clicky, plzkthx!!!!111one-eleven"
The author acknowledges that "OSes like Ubuntu" are easy to use but dings them on the installation process relative to Windows XP. (S/)He has clearly never installed XP from scratch. [...] Those two concerns are addressed by buying a machine with a pre-installed OS and using that.
The point is that you can pay a nationally recognized company to build you a computer and install Windows XP on it. It's much harder to find a national OEM vendor that sells machines that have been preloaded with Ubuntu.
He also misses the point that all users are, of course, free to learn the advanced technical skills that are dismissed in this column.
Only if their time is worth nothing. If the time to learn how to get Linux working is worth more than the price of a copy of Windows XP and its successor, then the masses will choose Windows XP and its successor.
Sorry, software is still a primitive art. We humans tend to do things the hard way first, it seems to be the nature of our thought process.
But don't fear... it will get simpler. It already has to a great degree.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Make it work like Maya.
In order for this to happen, somebody has to distill the interface of Maya software into a freely licensed design document. Please do this and submit it to the Blender developers.
complexity exposed to the end user" exactly describes what TFA and I were thinking.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
3 *different* SATA boxes, different hard drives different motherboards (2 home machines, 1 work machine), install from retail XP disc, no drivers required at all.
**however** we had to switch Linux distros (or upgrade kernels) in order to get Linux working. At work we use a certain version of a certain OS for compatibility reasons and it did not support SATA. Those of us with the new boxes are now using FC4.
By the way... Fedora Core 3 does **not** support SATA. Must have been 4.
I am not sure it is really important to spend a lot of time making nice easy software for people who are not interested in learning. Soon there will be tons of web service providers which will all be trying to make their interface more easy/glitzy/whatever in an attempt to attract customers. Good documentation OTOH is very nice.
...although it could use some refinement.
The author indeed confuses accessibility with complexity. Products in general (and tech products in particular) may seem simple enough at first blush, but even an apparently simple product has hundreds of man-hours and all sorts of hidden layers behind it. This is especially true of an OS, where the user interface is just the visible tip of an architecturally tangled iceberg. FOSS develops by accretion, without the (admittedly dubious) benefit of a marketing department to push developers towards ease of use for the technically disinclined. It has the added wrinkle, not as rare as we might like, of an elitist minority that equates inexperience with stupidity.
People are willing to learn up to a point, but the non-geek crowd doesn't view the elegance of an operating system on its own merits; they want an OS that will pose the fewest possible obstacles between them and accomplishing the tasks for which they bought the computer for in the first place. Even then, education is a daunting task (as my grandparents, now somewhat Windows-savvy after long weeks of effort, can attest). Not only daunting, but in a business context, costly. Commercial operating systems are geared for this--the nature of the FOSS beast is to cater less to the inexperienced end user than to those who have at least some knowledge of the coded nuts-and-bolts. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does put those who just don't want to put in the time to learn a less visually appealing user interface at something of a disadvantage; most people are visual learners by instinct, and the lack of a GUI can be intimidating.
There should be a point and click install option for 90% of the things a n00b might want to do. For example installing a nintendo/snes/n64 emulator, and then finding the roms to run in it.
Nintendo is doing exactly this with Wii Virtual Console. As for free software running on a PC, most ROMs for NES, Super NES, and Nintendo 64 are not free software, apart from the collections on pdroms.de and similar sites.
Nothing is free.
You have to work even to breath the air around you.
Free software isn't free as in beer, or maybe force-fed beer so you don't have to expend any effort.
It is about choice, and freedom to use it how YOU want. Lacking the skills to modify the software doesn't make it less free. Just as having nothing to say or being a poor communicator doesn't take away free speech, or not having any associates somehow destroys freedom of association.
Usability is one goal, but proper use of the tools is essential. Many people are surprised at how often FEA gives "bad" results because people simply don't know what they're doing, despite the point and click ease of the software.
So far, most replies address the headline, not the article. It's a most misleading headline, too.
The article is about encouraging FOSS on Windows.
mt
Let's take GIMP, for example. It is free, and easy to install, but the ease of use ends there as it bears very very little similarity to other graphics editors of similar calibur such as Photoshop, Illustrator, or (my personal favorite) Paint Shop Pro. Now, it is possible to learn and become proficient with GIMP, I have had to and I can appreciate the software, but users hate to click and see nothing happen.
GIMP is an exception to the rules, however, as I have found most open-source software to be relatively intuitive and easy to use. Albeit, much of that software asks a little more of its users than the equivalent Windows software, but not much. Using the command line, or having a cursory knowledge of what one is doing is not an unreasonable demand for a user.
In fact, I would be more prone to saying that it is far more unreasonable to demand that software developers make software that anyone can use without any prior knowledge of the software. There are very few devices, electronic or otherwise, that require no prior knowledge on their use on the part of the user, and software shouldn't be expected to be the exception.
There is also a certain amount of freedom that comes from complexity. A number of my open source applications offer me a wealth of options that their closed-source counterparts lack. This adds to complexity, but I am rewarded for my efforts to learn by saved time and effort, and specific control over what I'm doing.
I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I think they are being very short-sighted. Applications such as Word and Excel are very complex, it's just that most users are ignorant to the complexity, and the applications are made to be tolerant of their ignorance. Someone who is familiar with page formatting on more advanced systems, however, tends to find applications like Word (and it's "auto-formatting") very frustrating.
I suppose the point that I'm trying to make is this: If you don't have the prior knowledge necessary to use a piece of software, that is in no way the fault of the developer. If you want to do something, do the work necessary.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
If I write a program that solves differential equations, does that mean it's not free because most people don't know a Runge-Kutta solver from an Euler solver?
If I release a badly documented v0.01 alpha release of a fabulous new file-transfer program, is it not FOSS because it's badly documented???
If free software is badly documented, badly interfaced, or otherwise too hard to use/understand... well then fix it!!! The principles of the GPL, for example, say that you have a right to study and modify free software, they don't say that you have the right to have it done for you!
My bicyles
Shorter Bong Dizon:
Most people don't care about freedom, therefore freedom doesn't exist.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Photoshop I have seldom used, so I know little about that. But I have used the Gimp too often. It always has something that makes me start screaming at my monitor, and that is a very bad sign for any program.
It does not matter that photoshop is hard to learn too, the problem is that it takes too much time to learn the gimp's interface. I don't want to spend 3 weeks learning the gimp, I want it to do what I want when I need it.
If any Gimp developers replies that I am not (in) the intended audience, then she/he does not deserve widespread succes. I heard that there was a new and more friendly editor named xara in town, so I'll be checking that one out soon. They don't have to do that many things right to win me (and a lot of other part-time gimp users) over.
But to tie the diversion to TFA; the problem is most likely caused that FOSS developers are mostly sratching their own itches. So for them it is no problem at all that the interface is hard to understand. They probably won't even notice, because when you have developed the software, you have automatically learned the interface (or molded it to your expectations). And when it gets really bad and it finally is suggested that the interface needs to be totally overhauled, the developers will baulk at it because all of a sudden they will need to unlearn the old interface and learn a new one.
My suggestion how to this problem: make the interface skinnable or plug-able, so that other people can develop a more simple interface. I would love it if I could change the interface behaviour via (menu)->edit->preferences->configure interface, or (menu)->settings->configure interface. And while you are at it, please dump that braindead gnome toolkit for a kde one :P
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
"I can't count the number of times I've had to have people do weird shit like boot a LiveCD just to run lspci, because Windows doesn't support any of their hardware, and can't even retrieve the vendor information hardcoded into it so as they can find their own drivers."
Is it really that hard to count to zero? Stop lying fanboy, it's embarassing to watch.
RTFA. The author is making a case *for* using OSS. He/she is *not* against OSS, rather is advocating the use of OSS on Windows, as a half-way house between Windows with proprietary software and an OSS OS that works out-of-the-box. In fact he/she points to several pieces of OSS that work extremely well.
... *sigh*
/. eds are on crack. Personally, I'm inclined to the former view ... I reckon Hemos was feeling bored and wanted to see a lot of people look foolish :)
It seems a fairly obvious point to me, and I have no idea why it's news. But it's even more obvious that no-one in this thread has actually read the article in question
This whole story is either one incredibly witty troll that we're all feeding, or else it's proof that the
User-level software packaging is what will vary between distros, and not hardware drivers.
Do you claim that while packaging of applications differs, packaging of drivers is identical among GNU/Linux distros for PCs? If this is the case, how does one create a hardware driver package that 1. runs on all common GNU/Linux distros for PCs and 2. satisfies the hardware manufacturer's licensors who demand that the driver be proprietary software shipped as a binary? Google linux hardware driver packaging found me this KDE hardware mailing list post which details the difference between the Windows philosophy and the Linux philosophy and how the latter doesn't mesh well with the expectations of a residential end user.
That's true, you have to know your audience and simple terms are always better. "Free software" is a better term than FOSS, despite the ambiguity. Everyone likes "free," even if they don't understand what that means for software. Everyone knows what "distribution" is, though they might not have the foggiest idea where free software comes from. Though it's a mouthfull, everyone knows what "image manipulation" and "text editing" are all about. This is an advantage free software has over commercial software, where brand recognition is so important the user is forced to remember company names and three letter file extensions in order to start and use programs. Most free software advocates do take advantage of this fact.
It's not really an issue here. The author is addressing the technical community, which knows what free and open software is. He wants people to continue to port software to Windoze. I dissagree with his opinion, but that's another matter. I doubt Linux newbies are going to find their way to this essay.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Only after there is a good office application people will buy/use/learn Linux. Then other software will follow. The more software written for an OS -- the more people will use it. The more people use it -- the more software will be written for it.
They're simply different from the point-and-click interface paradigm that Windows has foisted on the computing public.
I and my classmates were able to use Apple II machines effectively when we were 13-14 years old. Those had a command line. Why can't (most) adults handle the same thing now? It isn't that hard -- it's just that most people have developed a mind block, assuming that command-line somehow equals "having to be a programmer to use" when that is patently false!
I think most people say "complex" when they mean "different from what I'm used to"...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
The fact remains that, folks like my parents who still do not understand the setup.exe convention in windows, even though it has existed for the whole time they have both used computers, will be daunted by complexity regardless of usability design.
You can't build computers simply enough for folks who have no interest in learning about them. Their is no free as in "free from complexity" with computers. Computers are not toasters. They do not turn bread into toast with the press of a button. They are complex electronic tools. While a hammer is a tool with one appropriate use, the computer is a tool with infinite uses. With this endless utility comes endless possibilities for complexity.
It is a false to say computers should be free from complexity. Simplicity should exist where simplicity *can* and where simplicity *works*. While efforts to improve usability are far from fruitless, it is also important to recognize once and for all that computers will never be free from complexity, nor should they.
This is not not an elitist issue any more that it is an elitist issue that people learn reading, writing, or arithmetic. It is a literacy issue, plain and simple. If the world at large is required or desires the use of computers, then the public *must* become computer literate, and not as an after-thought. "Click-click-click spoon feed me" functionality should exist when it *can*, but by no means should it be a requirement for usability design.
Just like any other skill worth learning, you will get rewards in proportion to the amount of effort you put forth with computers. People who want to be able to use computers with no training, and with no attempts to learn or become literate in their understanding of them *should* face difficulty. Just as someone who has no desire to learn to read *should* face difficulty in our society. Take some responsibility people.
FOSS is about freedom to use the computer you bought, and not be forced to comply with some other entity's (Microsoft or other proprietary software vendors) idea for how you should be able to use your computer. FOSS allows me to use an operating system that fits my needs, software that fits my needs, and unlocks infinite possibilities to me for knowledge and utility. It removes the artificial barriers to use the tool I purchased, that belongs to me, and not them.
When I was growing up, my possible knowledge of my computer was very limited. If I wanted to learn how to program (which I did), and wanted to see how programs were made, I was out of luck. It was a closed world, because unless my parents were able to afford many books and compiler software (which they could not), I was locked out. If I wanted to read the code of the programs I used (which I did), so to gain a better understanding of how my computer worked, I was out of luck, as it was not provided and was not permitted. My choices were binary or nothing. If my device driver didn't work with my operating system, there was no recourse for me, because neither I nor the technical community had access to the knowledge of how this software worked.
FOSS has opened those doors. It has recreated the computer, and made it possible for it to be fresh and new again. Now my knowledge of my computer is limited only by my will. I can put forth effort and be rewarded with knowledge, which for a lover of learning means a dream come true. FOSS is the international library of computer knowledge, and one that is appropriately up-to-date, where our physical libraries are not.
People who harp constantly on the progress of this or that feature, or this or that look or feel, or this or that difference with the conventional proprietary software package miss the whole point. Design features, look and feel, and usability are of mere circumstance. With FOSS, these things can be changed, they can be improved, and they can be added. The freedom exists for those who would just reach out and take it to make these improvements, and the community at whole benefit
w2^7me out.
So you think freedom is just handed to you? I wonder what the founding fathers of America would say to that? You have to work, and fight to obtain freedom. There will always be oppressors to take it from you. IE: Microsoft Now. And England a few centurys ago.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. - Jefferson
This morning I get a call. Mom's literally in tears. She tried to send her newspaper column as an email as she always does, and for some reason, it opens up KMail instead of doing it the way it used to. Why? I haven't a clue. Maybe she did something. Maybe Suse silently changed her preferences. I don't know, but I do know that brought her morning to a screeching halt.
Of course, KMail was not configured for anything. I tried to talk her through setting up the mail account, but to no avail. She wasn't sure what she was looking at, she didn't know any of the terminology (tabs, menubar, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc.), and who the fuck knows the difference between SMTP and sendmail? Me, you, and about 12 other nerds. I couldn't make heads or tails of what she was telling me--"Identities" sounded promising, but AFAICT, it contained no information on mail servers or log in information. It was a dog's breakfast of dipshittery.
I finally talked her through sending the column through a webmail account, but Christ almighty people--this is damned unacceptable. I'm going today to buy a Mac Mini, and I will set her up with it, and I will set up VNC or some kind of remote administration, and I'll never suggest such a nightmare again.
The prophet jwz said it best when he described the "Cascade of Attention Deficit Teenagers" syndrome. You make a nice server, open-sourcers, but your desktop sucks balls. (If your first instinct is to tell me that we should have used a different distribution, you are unteachable and should probably go fuck yourself.)
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Dude, OTOH, IMHO, and IANAL are not words and don't belong in your article summary, you retarded piece of shit. You might as well write A/S/L or LOL or ;) in there. Nice job, jackass.
This confusion of the senses of the word "free" happens a lot, sometimes deliberately. I have heard justifications for human slavery that ran something like this: "Slaves are more free than their owners because slaves are free from the burdens of responsibility."
The two senses used here are:
1)the freedom to DO something that one wants.
2) the lack of presence of something that one does not want.
and don't forget
3) A product which is distributed at no financial cost.
These three meanings constitute three very different concepts, they just happen to be tied up in a single word.
In the case of "free" software, non-techies often think of the word in the third sense (oh...i don't have to pay for it? then why is suse charging 70 bucks for it?). Usually the techies think of the word in the first sense (aha, I can do whatever I want with it, including look at the code, change it, and redistribute it). One word is used, but two meanings are invoked.
Adding the word "truly" to the front of the word "free" does not clarify its meaning in any way whatsoever.
FOSS is what it is, and various senses of the word "free" apply to it in various contexts.
Ease of use (or, more accurately, ease-of-learning-how-to-use-without-reading-much) is a feature. Some free software has it, and some free software does not. This feature does not make it any more free in the first or third sense of the word, but it might make it more free in the second sense of the word (free from barriers to adoption). This does not make it "truly" free, it just makes it more free in a completely different way.
I might add: if something is available to you at no financial cost, and all you are doing is complaining that it isn't exactly like the stuff you already know how to use, don't be surprised when the response from the providers is less than positive.
It's too much to ask that you be able to add a feature to an OPEN SOURCE "hey you can learn from this and modify it" program by finding a similar feature and mimicking it? Damn, I really wish I had gone into software "engineering" (rather than real engineering) where low standards like these are the norm.
If you think my comments are irrelevant, explain why. I specifically related them to the topic by showing how open sourced software isn't really conducive to learning and modification as advertised.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
indeed
from yet another person who seems to think that you can just invent "freedoms". It doesn't mean anything, it doesn't make sense, and as long as the idea of "freedom" is abused like this it's not even worthy of discussion.
...exclusive concepts. However this is highly subjective since "quality software" is defined in different ways by different users. Witness:
1. Today, I consider quality software to be very flexible and to allow for extensive CLI interfaces as well as highly intricate GUI interfaces. Think of combining tools like KDE Konsole, Enlightenment 0.7 Desktop, GNU Screen, LVM, and Xen virtualization.
2. When I was a new PC user (circa 1994) I considered quality software to be exclusively GUI based, object oriented (even though I didn't really know what that meant at the time), statically linked binaries (just a single executable with everything built in and no lib dependencies or "DLL Hell"), and everything had to be a metaphor to real world objects.
3. Mr. Middle Management considers quality software to be what all other Mr. Middle Managers use. Regardless of whether the program actually works well or works at all, if all the others have it, then he's got to have it too.
4. Mr. Joe User believes that quality software is something that "just works" from his point of view. It might be the most inefficient, spyware-ridden piece of crap, but if it allows him to do task X with little or no effort, then it's "quality" as far as he's concerned and he doesn't want to know about better ways even if they will help him save money, and get the most out of his computer.
So the problem isn't with FOSS. The problem lies with the users. Unless you're willing to work harder to get the most out of your computing experience, you will probably shy away from FOSS. Besides, who says that FOSS is primarily trying to get more mindshare? FOSS doesn't exist to be popular. It exists to do a job and do it well. In many cases, doing a job well is something that only professionals and hobbyists can do. (Ugh, I hate the term "hobbyist" because it belittles the importance of these advanced users) And this will never change.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
It basically comes down to your view of whether "elitism" is good or bad.
If you think elitism is a good, and a function of the meritocracy you believe the world should be, then the complexity forcing people to learn how to use it is a good thing. It means that, in general, only those who are intelligent enough to correctly use the software will be able to, causing less problems down the line.
If you think elitism is a bad thing, fostering an oppressive society with a second class citizenry with fewer rights than other, "better" people, then the complexity is another tool of the establishment to put a glass ceiling stopping the little guy from climbing the ladder, and messing up the elite's cushy deal, where they force you to pay them to do what is now vital work, or spend a lot of time you may not have to join their secret society.
My own opinion is that it's a bit of both. Some stuff can't be simplified by the nature of the task, and most computing tasks can't be simplified easily. The simpler interfaces to complex tasks that you find in software such as MacOS X (whose server config front ends are really quite easy to understand, judging from the utterly non-technical people I know who make a lot of money runing their OS X web servers) and Windows XP (more complicated than Mac for server tasks, but for day-to-day normal people's computing is really as easy as long as your brain's aligned to the Windows paradigm) cost Apple and Microsoft respectively an extremely large pile of money spent on developer time, tester time, and UI designer time. The majority of open source projects don't have the kind of money available to them to spend that kind of time making their particular server easy for Joe Bob to use. Especially not when they can generally rely on companies like Apple, Red Hat, or a devoted fan coder, to write some kind of simpler front-end for their application.
That said, if the widest possible adoption of your software is your goal, you're never going to get that without aiming to satisfy the lowest common denominator of users. If you are unwilling to bother with the lowest common denominator, your cries of outrage and curses at the stupidity of your users are going to be met with well deserved scorn. If you're unwilling to make your software's interface simpler, and can't find anyone willing to do it for you, don't be shocked if it's not the hottest software in your market niche. If you get lucky and it does become a roaring success despite its complexity, buy yourself a beer and congratulate yourself on your luck. =)
If you're re-installing the same version of Windows, you get to go through a little scavenger hunt on the Dell site, download a driver, maybe extract it to floppy(!), install, reboot, repeat. If you're installing a different version of Windows, God help you. Dell doesn't like that, and often doesn't have drivers for versions of the OS that weren't initially installed. I understand why it's good for them, but it's a value-reducing feature for me.
I am not a crackpot.
Not only that, but the complexity argument is equally valid for closed as well as open source.
This argument indeed cuts both ways.
Here are some other, notable good starts for yourself and your children all of which are much better than what you can get from broadcast TV, which did not work so well:
Such things are not so silly anymore, now are they? Every human discovery comes from a dedicated and well educated person or team of people. People can and do all of the above things because they believe they can. The world needs mega tellers to balance it's continuing dissasters.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So you admit there is a driver problem, but then try to rationalize it by saying "the hardware's closed source so we have to reverse engineer it." End users don't care if it is technically difficult, they just want the drivers. Just because it is hard to do in no way makes the issue any less relevant.
When I sovle a problem using a computer, I usually want to focus on the problem, not the software. If I have to become a guru, before I can become productive, then the software has failed. With good software, I don't need to RTFM and I don't need/i> to search for an example on the web. I don't need/i> to build it from the sources. I don't need/i> to configure it. Good software works the way I think it should. Good software is clear and consistant. It doesn't hide features. It doesn't require training. It doesn't require talking to that weird guy in the cube next to the restroom.
There was a time when movies had plots. So you knew who's ass it was, and why it was farting.
-Not Sure
Sure, and democracy is not democracy if people engage in complex arguments about it.
Vote Bush!
I think that the author should have added that the freedom to run doesn't work for those who don't have a computer, so free software programmers should provide free computer and free electricity to everybody! *Sigh*
FOSS developpers are free to develop software on whatever OS they want, sure they would have more users by going to windows but so what? That's not the point!
Given the amount of free-software for Unix system apparently developpers prefer programming for Unix than for Windows and it's not even sure that they would get more contributors by using Windows instead of alternative OS..
I'm tired of these BS authors.
He redefines what "freedom to run" is to prove his point. Well, his redefinition is just flawed.
Freedom to run means just that : you can legally run the program within the license terms.
User-friendly has NOTHING to do with it : many people will find GNU (s)ed, GNU grep, valgrind or GCC not easy to use or very complex.
These programs "exclude people who do not possess high technical knowledge or advanced skills sets", and yet, they are free to use, but not for everyone.
They are highly in use everywhere by people technical enough to use them.
They are still free software, still free to run to most users and not a "hollow promise".
So the redefinition of the author is contradictory and just a pile of stupid fallacies.
..would file a bug report if it was one click easy to do. Program screws up, dialog box pops up (behind the scenes gathers needed info) mash "send". Make it that easy. Don't make them have to go register at some bug reporting agency then go through the developer-speak two step in attempting to write down what happened, because they don't know, they don't know where to look for the relevant info, etc. Remember the old netscape crash report service? It has to be that easy.
GNU/Linux distributions almost always have the 20MB it takes for all of the latest drivers, and that's more than enough for all but the newest of proprietary crap hardware. Live CDs automagically recognize all of the above without user intervention.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Freedom to run a program means guaranteeing to an ordinary user that he or she will be able to run and use a program productively and free from complexity. What is the worth of freedom if it cannot be enjoyed by everyone?
Reality can be complex. Systems that interact with complex aspects of reality are also, of necessity, somewhat complex.
There is a poorly-defined concept for the property of persons that enables them to interact with the more complex aspects of reality. It is called intelligence. It is a maleable property, much like the ability to play the piano or write poetry--if you practice, you'll get better at it, although some people will always be better than others.
Lack of intelligence is not lack of freedom. We have distinct words because there are large differences between the concepts that any ordinary person understands.
This is sponsored FUD, just a sematic extension of the usual "free software has high TCO" for the linguistically challenged people who think that semantic hair-splitting is interesting, as if ordinary people don't use ordinary words to communicate more-or-less adequately every day. There is a place for such hair-splitting. That place is in university departments specializing in analytic philosophy.
Free software does have a problem with sometimes-excessive complexity, but that doesn't make it non-free, and only someone who is not able to deal with ordinary language as well as ordinary people can would suggest that was the case.
Perhaps the author of the article simply needs more practice with language to get over this difficulty. Or maybe they are just stupid.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
It is something fixed and immutable by the commercial firms to the average user. First, they can't do it themselves. Second, they don't know who can do it for them...don't say forums or anything else as there is no "standard" or publicly know (outside of these discussions) way to request a feature except to use the known way of going back through the person/company that installed your OS/software. Third, if they were to find the person/company to do the customization then that would cost money. Individual customization isn't cheap...it isn't until you can have a product that is used by many people that it can become profitable (thus the large commercial firms). Fourth, not all people are rational in that they see things as I have a problem, let's search out the possible soultions. It generally goes something like this. My soundcard doesn't work...there must be something wrong with it. Let's take it back to Best Buy (who tells them that it isn't supported in Linux). Then they blindly assume that it will never work in linux.
Basically if it doesn't work "out of the box" then the chances of it ever working are very low. Same way with "features" and "customizations." To the average person, they will glady choose software working over software freedom.
As you said "Different people, want different things." Well, you are different, you want different things. Don't try to give them something they don't want.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
Dell doesn't do Ubuntu. They do Red Hat.
So why is the Linux machine ($824, monitor and burner sold separately) more expensive than the Windows machine if Linux is free software? And why are Linux machines available only from "small business" and not "home office"?
You can get thinkpads with Ubuntu rather easily.
No, I can't: "This bundle is only available to UK customers." Any corresponding offer for people in Canada or the United States who cannot afford such a "business trip"? Which Google keywords should I try?
Sears sells boxes with Linspire, as do others.
Are these boxes on display in the brick-and-mortar stores, or does one have to already know about the (poorly advertised) offer, already have a computer, and already have Internet access in order to buy one?
I'd argue that, depending on your local market, a solid understanding of "what's going on under the hood" is worth substantially more than nothing
"My local market" doesn't seem to have a lot of entry-level IT job openings in careerbuilder.com. I've been looking for a job for three years; have I wasted three years of my life on the newspaper and careerbuilder.com?
older business model-write code, closed source, sell it
newer business model -write code, give it away, sell "service'
proposed business model-write and share code freely inside another business, USE THE CODE in a REAL business,the REAL business "makes the money", acme anvils, number one cars, fred's alternative energy systems, sally's heavy equipment, todd's house building company, bill's plumbing, margaret's greenhouses and christsmas trees company, and etc. A to Z out there, plenty of opportunities to use computer software IN A REAL BUSINESS.
Stop treating code as a saleable product, stand alone or as a service. It's tools, stop being in the tool business, the tool business is way overbloated and saturated, it's old school, time to move on now, be in a real business, just use the tools and share with the other tool users in the other companies out there. It's what you can DO with the code in ANOTHER business where the money really is and what creates wealth in society.
Powerpoint? What use is that in the home?
If you're already in the Microsoft Office mindset after having done correspondence and homework in Word and your budget in Excel, PowerPoint looks attractive for a photo slide show.
Before the internet "came along" how many home computers were little more than games machines or paper weights?
So where are the AAA commercial games for Linux other than M-rated first-person shooters?
I'm sure you probably aren't attacking FOSS in order to defend MS, but computers have their own language domain! Usually done because terms that anyone would understand are too cumbersome.
Do you want your car's engine to be called the "Rotational Force Maker"? No, that's still too complicated. How about "Thing That Makes Wheels Turn"?
When TV arrived, it brought a whole new set of words an concepts. It's just part of the game.
Blar.
The only true way in which software can be called "free" is when is metaphysical, for only when the oppressive shackles of determinism have been cast off of all software can the software itself exercise the ultimate freedom of deciding its own destiny that all the rest of us take for granted (whether it actually exists or not).
Until then, all this rhetoric about "free software" is just doublespeak for "indiscriminate employment of software." Black people in Mississippi in 1860 had the freedom to do whatever their masters said; 146 years later, Linux is still there.
You must be new to real IT circles. Welcome.
At this point I think the main reason GIMP is still the gorilla of open source graphics apps, is simply because of the first mover principle. It was capable of good stuff (horrendously bad gtk interface not-withstanding) before any other similar apps were available. And now we are only slowly recovering from that (unfortunately GIMP doesn't seem to be recovering along with us though). This is something that happens a lot in software... not just open source. Look at windows...
That was Apple's big thing for a while. "Mac has no viruses." Well, it's been said before and I'll say it again. That was because there was no incentive to write them. There is starting to become an incentive now as there are more mac users...and here come the viruses
As the number of Linux desktops being maintained by casual users increases, so will the viruses that target them. They will be just as easy targets as the windows desktops as they will be running the same type of software with the same inherit security holes. They will not maintain them, and they will not know any better.
Right now linux is still used mainly by technical people who at least vaguely understand how computer work. It also has a large user base that are extremely advanced users. Those people will probably never have the problems that average users have. However linux IS easier for them because they can make it into exactly what they want and are free to modify it to their liking.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
What use is, for example, a compiler, to someone without high technical knowledge?
Honestly, where do they get some of these authors?
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
...
...
4. Mr. Joe User believes that quality software is something that "just works" from his point of view. It might be the most inefficient, spyware-ridden piece of crap, but if it allows him to do task X with little or no effort, then it's "quality" as far as he's concerned and he doesn't want to know about better ways even if they will help him save money, and get the most out of his computer.
So the problem isn't with FOSS. The problem lies with the users.
FOSS doesn't exist to be popular. It exists to do a job and do it well.
Whoa. Time out. You were so close. Quality tools - and software packages are tools, especially in a business environment - need to get the job done as cheaply and effectively as possible. That is it. If they require a lot of additional work, be that in a steep training curve or even in the time necessary to de-crapware a computer, that goes against their cost. If they only do 2/3 of the job requiring a lot of manual work, that goes against their cost too. The one with the lowest cost wins.
So why on earth is this the problem of the users? If a user can get their job done effectively with a tool that has some side effects that do not affect them or their organization, why should they not use it? Is it their responsiblity to use the "elegant" solution that requires more time to install, train, and use, because its created in a more FOSS/popular way, or written in a particular language?
I mean, really. And people wonder why FOSS advocates have a bad reputation in some circles.
Besides, if "Joe User"'s software really does allow him to do hist tasks with little or low effort, why does he care about "getting the most from his computer?" That's not the problem he's trying to solve. As for saving money, never underestimate the expense of an employee who's not being productive. They cost way more than most computers, as any business owner could tell you.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
tend to
1. Redifine buzzwords
2. Point out the new inconsistencies in semantics
3. Concluding that there is a fundamental flaw in the open source model
Is this the best they've got?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I'm done with my wife, my neighbors and my four year old girl. I also help teach a class for newbies, which has plenty of Aunt Betty and I'm familiar with all the bogus issues and FUD. I can assure you that the new environment is more comfortable for them and soon becomes more familiar.
Most distros' idea of migration is a non-destructive partition sizer and Grub. Once you can boot both, you're on your own. ... I can't figure out how to work MythTV, the remote control's dead, I can't find my documents, I have to re-enter all of my e-mail settings and I can't find the cheat sheet from the ISP, and that pretty Thomas Kincade screensaver is gone. Oh, and how do I get to the iTunes store?
Well, well, well, you seem to have done some research but I can easily refute most of the above and routinely help newbies get through the troubles that Bill Gates created. MythTV is an advanced topic and not really something most computer users are interested in. Where Windoze hides user documents is a real pain, but there are lots of good GUI tools to find them, much like you would use under Windoze itself if you wanted to really know. Xandros does a particularly good job of helping the Windoze refugee and provides links in a windows familiar desktop environment. Email and contact information are easy to migrate, despite Bill's best efforts to lock them up. ISP information is something the user has to enter whenever they move to a new computer or have to wipe and reload their broken Windoze PC. The same can be said for screensavers and every other customization done to Windoze, but can not be said of GNU/Linux, which is much easier to move from machine to machine. On the media front, I'll direct you to a record store, Magnatune, the internet archive's concert collection, and other sources of non DRM'd material. All of the things you mention are flaws that GNU/Linux does not share with Windoze and more reason to migrate sooner rather than later. Free utilities are superior in every case.
But ya got Bill Gates real good, didn't ya?
I'm not out to get Bill Gates, I'm out to keep him from screwing other people. When it's all done, he can sit around with his ill gotten $40,000,000,000. So long as he quits suing public schools, and trying to lock up computing, I'm happy. There's no chair throwing here.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Seriously, the current state of DRM initiatives & the like has me motivated to get serious about migrating. But were it not for FOSS on Windows - and even moreso, cross platform apps - I probably wouldn't find Linux accessible enough to adopt. I don't think I'm lazy or a complete dolt when it comes to figuring stuff out, but I have my head in writing Windows software ~12 hours a day (okay, 7 after -= /. time), and a house and a wife and an albeit meager social life. You get out what you put in & all that, but nevertheless, time for indulging in new learning curves is finite.
Re: the points above, granted, simplicityMeasure != similarityToMicrosoft. I think "simplicity" in this context is more like the signal:noise involved in accompishing what one wishes to. And in that light, considering the IP, privacy & freedom issues of this moment in history, there's tremendous potential benefit - to the Linux community and beyond - in being mindful of the valid subset of reasons that Windows appears more accessible to the causal PC user. Contributing towards creating a similarly inviting and nonthreatening Linux experience for those folks = a bigger contingent that cherish the values of "open" and "free."
Pi Ran Out
"I do not see how creating difficult to use software can make you competitive in the long run. Competition just "gets inspired" by your project, copies some code, adds documentation and eats you alive."
Sourceforge must be an all-you-can-eat banquet then.
But you're talking about a business environment. I'm talking about the person doing something REAL at home with their computer. As much as I can, I use FOSS exclusively at work. But I'm one of those people who CAN be productive because I know what I'm doing with FOSS. However, as much as I wish others would use the software the same way I do, they can't because they don't have the experience or knowledge. It's a plain fact that to do the job right, you need to have the right tools and know how to use them. That is why it is a user problem. Most users don't know how to use the tools nor should they even be attempting to use them.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
The author's main argument is that FOSS OS install difficulty is too hard.
;). And Applications->Office->Open Office is vastly more intuitive than "start->Open Office.org->Open Office." I suppose it's not so much for OpenOffice, but try something like most games where it's put under the company name then game name.
Obviously the author hasn't installed WinXP. It's not particularly easy... It has all the same questions (minus a couple of security choices) as say Anaconda (RedHat's installer) except it actually requires you to do a text-based part where Anaconda doesn't.
Then he says you have to install device drivers when done. Incorrect. Device drivers are shipped with the kernel (all the FOSS ones) and the system (virtually always) detects all known hardware. So if you have FOSS OS compatible hardware, you have no driver issues. *shock*
In Windows Microsoft does not ship drivers for every device they know of. They ship generic ones for as many as possible (most) and then the user is expected to install the drivers from the manufacturer. Installing something, no matter how easy, is always more difficult than doing nothing.
Application installation? I guarantee you it's easier to select OOo from a menu than install it on WinXP
There is no reason why "Ease of Use" and "Quality Software" is mutually exclusive. Any confusion on what meets those two conditions is open to debate, but that is a seperate issue.
As a straight-up example on why they can co-exist, take a look at your web-browser. Each is easy to use (mainly because they keep cloning each other's features), and has verying degrees of quality and flaws. For example, Explorer is closely linked to the operating system but has plenty of security holes, Mozilla has a large development team that quickly fixes flaws but cannot be easily repaired by it's users, and Opera can pass the Acid2 test but misses on some "standard" Javascript.
Any problems that prevent either of those two categories being met is caused by developer lazyness. A great example of software not meeting either of those categories would be most "Realtime Tactical Simulation" (RTS) games - which suffer from various micromanagement issues. For example, if you select a group of units and order them to attack a single unit, they all stop in their tracks the instant the enemy unit dies. (This is most severe in the older RTS games, which do not even come close to implementing an "attack-move" feature. )
FOSS exists only to prevent a paying a massive amount of money on software licenses for things that are generally considered trivial. It's "ease of use" and "quality" is just like any other commercial/shareware application - it's as good as the programmers make it to be.
If a developer of commercial software can't deliver, his software won't go anywhere. The same applies to open source. As an example, there was an open-source author asking for help on his hangman game - the game itself contained so many flaws (especially considering that it was a small project) that it was probably could do a rewrite from scratch.
This is also generally why FOSS hasn't yet penetrated into Windows - most projects plop in a configure script that is only designed to scan for technicalities in Unix systems. Likewise, it's the same reason Windows Apps don't penetrate into the Unix world, since they usually hard-code themselves to use Windows API calls (instead of wrapping them inside an internal API.)
In most cases, that is correct - one complaint about the Adom roguelike was that it was complex since it had 'd' for drink rather than for drop. (Or something else... I haven't played that game in a while, but I know the default keybindings are a bit different than what was considered "standard".)
However, there is such a thing as unnecessary complexity. Most OSS projects have something called a "configure" script that detects more exact information about the operating system - checking the size of a long, checking whether your system uses or . If you are running Windows, it means you have to obtain a copy of sh - alongside Mingw + MSys or Cygwin. In either case, you have to download a development envrionment rather than use MSVC's compiler kit.
As a worst case - the Fortune program in the BSD-Games package cannot be easily compiled under windows without doing bulk changes. This is caused by unnecessary complexity because it encapsulates every function prototype with a compiler-specific or library-specific macro that is not present on Windows or MSVC.
Look at Lawyers, Tax Accountants, etc. There is some job security in making something people need completely incomprehensible to them.
Let's say you build the perfect Linux distro. Free and easier to use than Mac OS X. Now the business, who do they hire? Do they hire you @ 200k/year who can solve any problem, or do they hire some schmuck at $60k per year who can run it just the same (since it's so easy), and IF there is a major problem they can call you in for $150/hr.
If I owned the business, I know what I'd do.
My point is that no one in the FOSS community is motivated to make software super-easy to use.
1) Can't use FOSS because it's too complex.
2) Can easily work around the complexities and have minimal gain from making it "easier".. heck, could put themselves out of work if they make it too easy to use.
that leaves group 1 (potential FOSS users) SOL.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They called it RPG and some even call it a programming language. I called it sheer hell and torture....
... easy enough to create that anyone can do it and as such is non-novel (not patentable.)
abstraction physics
If a piece of software does one thing, and one thing well, then by virtue of design it is less complicated and thus more usable.
body massage!
Read the constitution, it is simple.
Bragging isn't always a good idea. Stupid marketing campaign. The whole 40 something and the 20 something, that is a good idea. To make the claim that their computers are virus free is to ask for trouble. What about all the mac users who will have to deal with viruses after hackers decide to debunk that claim... Stupid, stupid, idiots!!!
Hey look over there, a gift horse! Go look in it's mouth will you?
In which ways? Aren't there also tradeoffs where is is less efficient? Though I don't have much information on the stick shift vs. automatic, much less over time. All I know is that people are more likely to strip the gears than machines.
Freedom comes with responsibility. A free people can only remain so if they watch their government. If one is to be free to walk the streets, one must be able to protect oneself. When one is free to learn, one must take care to educate oneself.
Therefore, freedom comes with the exercise of effort (vigilance, skill, exercise, study) and cannot be exercised without it.
If one does not watch, the power of government will increase. If one cannot defend oneself, he will be afraid to go out at night or rely on the police to protect him. If one is not educated, anyone can tell him anything, and he will believe it.
Convenience is not a "freedom".
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Arlington, Virginia, USA
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Some things require a person to do a fair amount of work up front before they can be enjoyed in their intended manner. Learning a UNIX like system could be argued as a prerequisite to enjoy FOSS written for those systems. Or, in Literature, a good example comes from Ezra Pound, who stated: "Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books for ever. . . . As to the relative merits of Chaucer and Shakespeare, English opinion has been bamboozled for centuries by a love of the stage, the glamour of the theatre, the love of bombastic rhetoric and of sentimentalizing over actors and actresses; these, plus the national laziness and unwillingness to make the least effort, have completely obscured the values." Granted, Ezra would probably be marked as a troll, hehe.
I use FreeBSD for things because it allows me to get my work done. I find it perfectly easy to use. If you don't, use something else. The things that would make it "easy to use" for you would destroy its purpose for me.
In other words, an OS is not all things to all people. Use Windows, if that's what's easiest for you, nobody really cares.
It's not so simple to install WindowsXP. ... get owned because they forgot to activate the firewall before going online!
You're forgetting that WindowsXP straight out of the box is quite insecure: many people will install XP, configure their internet access, download additionnal drivers and service pack and
If memory serves, an unpatched Windows XP will be owned in less than 10 minutes.
Of course if you have an XPSP2 CD then the situation is better, but most people have only an XP CD..
There's another factor at work: people who don't understand computers AT ALL, who regard them as a Magic Box, tend to believe in a sort of sympathetic magic: "If I own this Fancy Software, I will magically become adept at using my computer."
And the LESS the user understands about their computer, the more strongly they hold to this belief that if only they have the right "spells" (programs) they'll be given magical abilities to use it.
I've seen this over and over. Most users don't get very far beyond this stage, thus never use their PC or their software in more than trivial ways. The computer isn't important to them for itself, it's just a TOOL of no more interest than a VCR or a toaster or any other appliance, and they just want it to work without an argument.
A very few buckle down and study using the PC like they would a college class, and those DO progress to being adept users (even if they don't really understand their PC, they can still USE it well). However, they are usually people who already had a geeky mindset, but had applied it in some other endeavour until this point. They are NOT the norm for computer users today, any more than we slashdotters are.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Roosevelt started it with his "Freedom from Want" business, and now the left wing pushes for the "right" to a job, or a house, or a college education, and also for such moonbeams as the "right" not to feel offended or marginalized based on one's personal characteristics.
The common denominator in the Left's concept of liberty is that they see nothing wrong with violating someone else's ancient natural rights in order to award pseudo-"rights" (privileges) to people they feel deserve it. Speech codes violate my right to speak my mind lest someone else be offended. The "right" to a job means someone less favored gets a job taken away (affirmative action) or all of us have tax money extorted at gunpoint to subsidize jobs for people who otherwise couldn't hold one (i.e. most government workers and educrats).
When a lefty tries to tell me that someone has a "right" to a job, my response is "Fuck you, you have liberty unparalleled in human history, use it to find your own job or starve to death, I don't care which." And when I see a headline like "FOSS Is Not Free If It's Not Free From Complexity", my response is "Fuck you, it is too free, and if you're too stupid to use it that's your problem and nobody else's."
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
The microcenter and the staples near me have the Linspire boxes available in the stores but I couldn't find them online to include in my links.
Thanks for the tip. I'll check the local Staples store next time I'm in that part of town. But I'm still wondering why I haven't seen ads on TV or in mainstream print for these machines with a preinstalled GNU/Linux OS.
searching resumes on monster (we don't generally post positions, just search through people who've posted their resumes)
Problem here is that spammers have begun to do the same thing: they spider Monster and CareerBuilder, look through all resumes, build a mailing list of everybody who has posted a resume, and then spam every shady job interview offer to all of them. After a while, it causes legit interview offers to disappear into the spamtrap.
Far and away the best results per dollar spent for us come from buying a booth at the job fairs.
Thanks for the tip. I'll watch the local universities for when they have the next job fair.
If you can't stand the complexity of the software, hire someone who does!
Do you do your own HVAC repair?
Do you do your own Vehicle Diagnostics and repair?
Television repair?
How is this different?
Amen. May the GIMP suffer the horrible, slow agonising decline into obscurity that it so richly deserves. Personally I think it's only a matter of time before the main Linux distros drop the GIMP like the republicans dropped McCarthy. I'm sick of its sub standard interface. Nothing is intuitive. Nothing.
I'm tired of the same tired excuses. "Just use keyboard shortcuts!", "Change your outlook!", "It's not made for you anyway!". Meanwhile Adobe willfully ensures Photoshop is the most pirated piece of software on the planet so that it maintains its mindshare.
The GIMP is a tradgedy. A courageous hero, with a crippling character flaw that destroys it. That flaw is the development teams sheer dogmatic refusal to make the interface better, and to a lesser extent, the GIMP users unyielding support for this position.
If GIMP users won't stop making excuses for their program, then users will excuse themselves from it.
May the Maths Be with you!
The author makes the erroneous assumption that FOSS is "aimed at geeks" and more complex. In fact, that's false. Systems like Ubuntu, SuSE, and RedHat are easier to install, more consistent, and easier to use for end users (this is in addition to having a simpler and more consistent internal architecture). There are many reasons for that, but some important ones are that desktop environments like KDE develop the entire suite of applications and utilities in a single project (Microsoft couldn't do that if they wanted to--antitrust), and because everything is tested and integrated by the distribution vendor and preinstalled at once.
Your typical Windows system, on the other hand, is cobbled together from dozens of applications from different vendors, and in different ways by different hardware vendors. Windows installations are such a mess that most people seem to buy new hardware rather than reinstall.
So, many people choose FOSS precisely because they want "freedom from complexity".
O' puke, now some don't just want free software, they want their mindless little paws held too....
Only the subject line is a shameless troll. Hear me out.
I've just finished another article for TuxMagazine (tuxmagazine.com) about MEPIS, which I settled on as the easiest-to-run, most-productive Linux after going through Mandriva and Linspire and Lycoris and a few others.
But for installation, all of them, and Ubuntu, and, yes, WindowsXP are dead easy installs on the most popular hardware. Just keep hitting YES or NEXT or whatever for all of them.
Alas, you "can't beat Windows" because it is ALREADY installed. Almost nobody ever installs it, except people who could also install Linux if they wanted.
And people who could install Linux (i.e. anybody who ever wrestled with DOS and original Windows, anybody who cares to spend a few hours reading and patiently following prompts)...they mostly install Windows anyway because "everybody has it" (see "pre-installed", above).
The only way to break that positive-feedback loop would be for Microsoft to ACTUALLY ensure that everybody really pays >$100 for Windows and for regulating governments to ensure that everybody has the option to get a bare machine.
Which hasn't happened and doesn't seem to be about to. Microsoft would rather see piracy than see Linux become an alternative, so piracy goes unchecked in places where money is tight (ie all of Asia, Africa, etc - Windows CDs are a buck each.) And hardware vendors virtually never offer a bare machine or a pre-installed Linux except for expensive servers.
Only when the few minor alternatives like the Wal-Mart Linux offerings become much more major will you see any change.
But the problem this writer claims? Doesn't really exist.
The double-click-now-tell-me-what-to-do wizard pattern for installing Windows applications, drivers, patches, etc. could be easily reproduced on any desktop linux/BSD variant using a simple shell script coupled with a good package management/repository to handle dependencies -- there's nothing magical about Install Shield or Windows for that matter; we had batch files that did the same thing in DOS.
body massage!
One of the top usability guidelines is consistency. That is, the interface or product is more usable if it is consistent with what the user has used in the past; it is easy to use if it is exactly the same as what they have been using already.
Therefore, everyone here that claims that apt-get is just as easy as double-click, next, next, finish is wrong. For the windows user used to the double-click, next, next wizard process, this is easiest for THEM. For the linux user never having touched windows since 3.1, apt-get is easiest for THEM.
If 90% of the world has been using windows only for some reason or another, and never heard of apt-get, I'm sorry, to 90% of the world, apt-get is infinitely harder than sticking with what they already understand. The only time people are willing to pay the cost of learning a new interface is if they need something from another platform that doesn't exist on theirs or the cost of learning is much cheaper than the cost of sticking with what they have.
As a linux user myself, it isn't easy to learn something new KNOWING that you could be using a usable system on your old knowledge. I've spent lots of time reading manual pages, documentation, and online forums to figure out how to do things for myself. Other people are not willing to put in that investment when they walk out of Best Buy with a laptop pre-installed with the same windows they've been using in the last 10 years.
That is not to say that all Open Source Projects have failed this usability criteria and some even try very hard to match similar windows interfaces. Consider firefox, and browser that has recently taken off. Why? Because in windows, it is configured how a windows user would want it and even a windows like installer. In linux it is configured using apt-get, emerge, or whatever package manager you have.
If open source projects continue to bury their heads in their idealistic world and ignore the reality of things, they will not suceed at becoming mainstream any time soon. Some projects don't intend to be mainstream and that's fine. But if a project does not intend to meet a requirement of usability for users of other systems, then don't try to argue that your system is more usable than theirs when clearly it won't be. And if the system in question is argued not to be usable, and it was intended not to be usable, there is no argument. I don't understand why everyone suddenly needs to defend their platform when it is clear that the project/platform accepted the deficiency in usability and all the commentary is doing is re-stating that fact.
> Photoshop I have seldom used, so I know little about that. But I have used the Gimp too often. It always has something that makes me start screaming at my monitor, and that is a very bad sign for any program.
It's not so bad, I think the hardest part I had was the "discoverability" of it--that is, given some unknown task, how do I figure out how to do it? Normally, I browse through menus looking for something reasonable. Only one problem--there are menus on each of several little open windows. Okay, that's odd... let's check 'em out.
Nothing. Nada. Eh? C'mon, they've got to have a menu doing that. Well, eventually I just exhaust all possibilities and end up right clicking the image. Oh! Now what on earth are all my menus doing *there*!? (I'm just glad I'm not using a Mac port of this right now...)
Honestly? If you want to "fix" the Gimp's interface, do two things:
* NO MORE CONTEXT MENUS. Or else I *at least* expect to have *every* such menu somewhere else, too.
* One window. Boring? Yes. But also familiar. I keep losing the window I wanted and I'd much rather they were all gathered together.
Both of these could be configuration options and you could let people choose the old way if they really liked it for whatever reason. Then we could get left with only the CMYK complaints.
The question is: Who make the major decisions?
I've known a programmer who asked his 3 year old daughter what a child's game should look like.
In FOSS, it's the programmers who make the decisions, so we get things like "don't download a binary, download the code and compile it."
At Microsoft, it's the marketing department, so we get things like "DirectDraw3D Start Menus."
You decide who you want making the decisions.
Andy Out!
P.S. Knoppix went a LONG way towards removing the hassles, now we just need a dual layer version that includes the help files.
2) Usability is not specifically an F/OSS problem - it is a software problem. There's a lot of crap software out there, that the vast majority of people never see (because it costs money). However, many people do see free / oss as it's (generally) availalbe free of charge.
5 .pdf). There must be a reason and what else could it be?
. html). But what's more interesting how long it will take the F/OSS community to realize this fact.
I agree, usability is a software problem but it seems F/OSS is especially plagued by not usable. Just think, why still wish the majority of the Linux users none-free applications? Just look at the first top inhibitor for Linux adoption (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov200
There are more proves just look at the sources (links) in this LXer article (http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/54009/index
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
I have replied to this article with a more complex(no pun intended) engagement with the issue. Check out the full posting here
an experpt:The articles somewhat confuses the concept of complexity hiding, because the article seems to narrow the definition of complexity hiding to "ease of use" GUI interface interactions, when complexity hiding is already the core development ideology for software in general. The development we do on metavid for example is dependent on huge mountains of complexity being hidden for us in software libraries command line utilities and programming environments. And what metavid does is essentially hide that complexity so that I and others can easily do complex tasks such as collectively mediate audio video streams.
What makes open source different from closed source is not that the complexity is truly hidden rather the complexity is visible upon request. This quality of open source software could more accurately be called freedom to engage complexity. Truly free software is really good at minimizing the amount of complexity necessary to be engaged at any given context.
Dizon's article hits on is a reoccurring criticism of open source software which essentially is; open source developers are comfortable with a different level of complexity than participants who come to use that software in a different context/level of complexity. But if you look at these seemingly complex open source tools they are popular because they hide complexity very well for the context in which they are engaged. Whenever anyone chooses to engage with software they are counting on someone to have abstracted away the complexity of completing a given task, which enables them to engage at the minimal level of complexity possible to accomplish a given task. This is the same principal that governs choices among open source software systems. In the ideal Open Source development scenario, you engage with a minimal level of complexity necessary to accomplish your task and then share that solution making future engagements/enhancements that much easier.
read moreWhat makes open source different from closed source is not that the complexity is truly hidden rather the complexity is visible upon request. This quality of open source software could more accurately be called freedom to engage complexity. Truly free software is really good at minimizing the amount of complexity necessary to be engaged at any given context.
read more
So GCC is not Free Software because my mother can't code in C?
Dumbest. Argument. Ever.
There is more to the software world than desktop applications geared towards the computer illiterate. Some of it is, by nature, difficult to use. Sometimes it amazes me how many people seem to ignore this glaringly obvious fact.
Software freedom is as important to scientific software (say, GNU Octave) as much as it is for to Mommie's email program - if not even more so.
Too bad you posted as an AC, this really needs to be seen by more Linux users.
Unless you've done a usability test, don't claim that something is usable... the result of usability testing is, more often than not, entirely counter-intuitive, and even if you *think* something is usable, it's unlikely that it really is. And, right now, there's very little usability testing in the Linux world.
People on Slashdot complain and gripe about the new Office 12 UI, and how terrible it will be because nobody will be able to learn it, but here's the crux of the matter: Microsoft did usability testing with it every step of the way, and because of they, they *know* it's a better UI. It's documented in a hundred studies that people can use it better, can find features that Word has had forever but they didn't know how to find them before, and that it won't confuse existing Office power-users. Documented scientifically.
The open source world has nothing like that. The closest you've gotten is just piggy-backing on Apple's (GNOME) and Microsoft's (KDE) previous work by duplicating it.
Comment of the year
The article didn't make the point I thought it was going to make, given the title of the post. I thought the article was going to argue that free software needs to be easy to modify in order for it to be truly free.
One of the primary purposes of making software free (as in speech) is to make it possible for users of the software to examine the code and make changes to it. This is nominally possible with all software released under free software licenses, but some pieces of free software are easier to modify than others.
Consider GNU Emacs (or XEmacs). It's designed to be easy for users to modify it. Indeed, it was written in Emacs Lisp partly to make it easier for users to modify it. There is a tutorial to help new Emacs users learn how to write Emacs lisp. There are also websites people use to share their Emacs extensions and to talk about writing Emacs lisp code.
Or take Firefox. Mozilla has set up a website for people to share their Firefox extensions. Mozilla also provides a tutorial explaining how to start writing your own extensions. You don't need to study hundreds of kilobytes of code before you can start writing simple extensions to Firefox or to Emacs.
Isn't a free software project a better free software project if the software is designed in a way that makes extensions easy to write? Or if the developers provide a guide for people who want to write their own extensions? Or if there are wikis or mailing lists for discussion among people who aren't members of the development team but want to tweak the code?
A full feature set and a simple interface can be combined, thanks to the ability of users to ignore what they don't need to understand. The trick in software is to provide advanced controls but make them optional -- preferably in a granular way, so that a browser user can be an advanced user of the tab options interface without needing to understand cookies or the security controls. Actually, a web browser is a great example. Practically anyone can use Firefox, even though an advanced user can:
Disable SSL 2.0 (leaving 3.0 enabled) with four clicks
Disable Javascript with five clicks
Disable a subset of Javascript functionality with fewer than a dozen clicks
Create an original parameterized keyword bookmark by typing in a url format string
And so on.
A surprising number of programs screw this up in one way or another, by shoving tons of options in front of a user with an incoherent set of defaults (if they don't learn all the options they'll never appreciate how leet I am!!!111!!1!) or not including basic controls (I have to hide this from the stupid grandmas or they'll stroke out and die lol!)
Too many ease-of-use oriented designers never figure out how easy it is to hide advanced controls from newbies or basics-only users. As long as non-optional controls are conspicuous and easily understood, optional controls can be hidden in relatively plain sight. Non-advanced users are not on a divine mission to find the advanced controls -- you don't have to make it an ordeal to access them! Usually it's safe to put them exactly where the advanced users expect to find them.
... at least when looking at SuSE and MS Windows :-).
Very true indeed. Thoug I do miss some gimp apologists saying that it's all my own fault.
How many 'the gimp sucks' pages are there out there? How many testimonials do the developers need before they change for a more novicefriendly course?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
...to make tech suitable for the most numbskulled luddite, all OSS projects should be abandoned in favour of a single uber-project with a single app, whose interface is a single screen-spanning and beautifully decorated click button, reading "I am an idiot. Tell me what to do."
In addition, in case the user is an illiterate, the computer will be equipped with a pleasant female voice to read the button's caption (with proper grammar substitution: "you are an idiot. click the mouse to be told what to do")
In extra easy mode, the screen reader also explains "mouse" and "click".
Modes that begin teaching the english language from "ma-ma!" on upward to the point where "button" is a concept are currently alpha, and would welcome developers.
It helps that this software is used by power-users, who get training in its quirks. That means I don't have to deal with basic how-do-I-use-a-computer stuff. They get that the flip side of the freedom our (proprietary) software gives them is the responsibility to learn how to use that freedom to produce the results they want.
To go back to the car analogy, it's a lot easier to 'drive' an elevator, or ride on a bus or train, than drive a car, but you also don't have as much freedom, because someone else gets to limit what your destinations could be.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
the system files are sacred and only touchable by root which increases system security dramaticaly
That has little to do with it. If system integrity were the issue, then I could obtain the manufacturer's official driver in RPM format and install it using sudo. But there exists no official driver in RPM format for many peripherals which were purchased for me before I decided to try switching to Linux, nor has the manufacturer given the community any help in creating unofficial drivers.
My problem is downloading as admin just creeps me out so I download as a user and store it scan it and logout; then I can't find it as admin, and even if I can find it, I can't open it!. I've set up a shared folder, saved things in there and then can't open then as anybody, some file I've saved are stored without a owner and even admin can't get them open. In frustration, I unistalled simple networking and installed real networking as implied by the microsoft knowlegebase but even that hasn't fixed the problem. Since I've been using Linux since before the release of Win95, I've found this WindowsXP SP2 behaviour very counter-intuitive, and very user unfriendly, any ideas?
No bullshit I'm really serious, this is really happening to me, I'd be greatfull for any help.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Microsoft is continuing to prove:
a) They've completely neglected robustness and rigour for the past fifteen years.
b) Said negligence is impairing their ability to deliver.
c) That the above won't matter as they've cultivated an ecosystem of dependencies so complex most people have no idea how to extricate themselves (or even envision an alternate world where things 'just work')
Is it simpler to deal with complexities up front, or to wait till they bite you in the balls? I know my day is simpler when I deal with Linux.
This argument doesnt work because its relative to whom your talking about. I know plenty of people who cant handle their macs or windows machines and i know plenty that can run *NIX or Linux like its second nature. If his point is that if its too hard for him to use - its not useful, well ... thats an argument. The only "skill sets" i needed to run Linux was how to read and use basic input/output devices. Another thing to keep in mind here is that most Linux software is still server software, or at least multiuser network systems software and shouldnt be compared directly to desktop Windows, most Windows users cant configure and run the Windows Server products properly either.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Complexity acts like a barrier. A barrier is meant to prevent you from going places you want to go and doing things you want to do. It limits your freedom.
So complexity makes software less free.
- -- Truth addict for life.
> Freedom to run means nothing if the exercise of such right excludes people who do not possess high technical knowledge or advanced skills sets.
The more you think about it, the more you realize what utter nonsense that is.
I've contributed a number of modules to the open-source community. Each module requires a significant amount of technical experience to understand and use. (For example: I donated a small XML parser module written in C, designed specifically for use in embedded applications where memory and stack are limited.)
What the hell right does this bozo have telling me that my contributions to FOSS "mean nothing" because they happened to be targeted toward technical users?
The idea is both nonsensical and offensive.
Welcome to Car Accelerator. Please be sure to read the 200+ page manual and download the latest patch fixes. Make sure that the Accelerator is supported on your hardware. If the (outdated) documentations don't specifically mention your hardware set, you can try but you're on your own! To get the updates, you can use the oh so simple updater program with cryptic yet simple parameters. To accelerate, use the keyboard shortcut control-X-G-B-R. Or access from the menu: File > Tools > Preferences > Advanced > File > Options > Next > Keybindings > Acceleration. If this doesn't work, you may have to hack the binaries. If you press Q, the entire system will come to a halt and you'll have to replace the gas in the gas tank and replace the engine. To stop the acceleration, press dot, followed by tapping your heels together...
Twitter has nothing better to do than to "evangelize" 24/7 about how utterly and unequivocally superior free software is, and how useless anything that does not come with full sorce happens to be. Twitter The Troll lives in the Richard Stallman dimension, where he wallows in the muck that is extremism and technology as religion. Twitter The Troll does no one any favors by badgering people who dare utter anything that is not ridiculous FUD about Microsoft (as if there weren't enough things to criticize them for).
Here are some examples of Twitter The Troll's Slashdot journey of sadness - 5000+ times over.
Twitter has very helpfully "identified" other "trolls" before. Those "efforts" did not go well, either. Yes, twitter. Always helping us. Always right.
Twitter The Troll. Truly a Slashdot legend and an illustrious member of the free software community. In his own mind.
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How stupid! If I want to drive a car, I'm free to, however I'm well aware that I take certain risks and need certain knowledge to do so. People who don't understand this wipe themselves and otherpeople off the face of the planet every day.
I'm free to fix my own car. Again if I didn't know what I was doing, that would be really stupid move, and if I did it bad enough the law would insist that the car should be taken off the road.
But people expect to download software and be able to operate it with no training and with no repurcussions to themselves. If someone gave me a free car, does the value of it decrease because I can't drive or fix it up? No, as with EVERYTHING ELSE in life, the value of a freedom is equal to the advantage of it that I can take.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
Release your specs STOP
Many PC hardware mfrs are not legally permitted to do this because some of the low level specs are licensed from another party under a non-disclosure agreement.
make a driver and provide it, for free STOP
Who compensates the driver authors? There aren't enough Linux end users buying the product to make it worth the investment for the company.
A free man can learn how to use any software package he wants. This is one of the virtues of being free. If you have decided that a software package isn't worth using because you're not willing to put the effort in to learn how to use it, that's your free choice as well. Nobody will stop you, and you haven't paid a thing for the opportunity to try.
It's been a long time.
I read the article, but have not read any of the replies, so this may be a "Me Too!" posting.
;} )and need GIMP for producing photos for the proper permits? Oh, and you only have a Ti-99? FINE!! Here is the original code for free (as in beer), you are free (as in speach) to get it working on your hardware, or to have someone else get it working for you.
The author of the article seems to be one of the people who think everything should be spoon feed to them, and be done so just because they "deserve it".
The first freedom they quote is the freedom to run. their implied statement is that the software should be free to run EFFECTIVELY, and therefore the software should be dumbed down to the level of the least able user.
If the user is not smart enough or motivated enough to learn the required skills and steps to use the software effectively, they are still free to run the software (first FOSS freedom), they just will not get good results (not addressed in the FOSS freedoms).
I have never wanted or used Adobe PhotoShop or any of the FOSS photo manipulation offerings. I would not expect GIMP to be made so non-complex that I could just install it and start cranking out professional quality images. There is no expectation on my part that I would not have a fairly steep learning curve - with either PhotoShop or GIMP.
The first FOSS freedom is lack of restrictions on the user as to when, where, how, who, etc can run the software. Are you a gay alien wanting to build landing strips for Martians (mangled on purpose
Back to the article - If you want to do complex things with software, there are some irreducible complexities you will have to learn, FOSS or Windows (or other non-FOSS) software.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.