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Why Users Drop Open Source Apps For Proprietary Alternatives
maximus1 writes "Hard as it may be to imagine, 'free' is not always the primary selling point to open source software. This article makes some interesting points about subtle ways Open Source projects might lose to the competition. Lack of features is a common answer you'd expect, but the author points out that complicated setup and configuration can be a real turn-off. Moreover, open source companies may not do enough to market major upgrades. If they did, they might lure back folks who tried and dumped the earlier, less polished version. This raises the question: what made you dump an open source app you were using? What could that project have done differently?"
For me it really wasn't about the lack of features. It was more on how easy it was to use as program. You have Feature X,Y, and Z on there, but if I have to navigate Menus A, B, C, and D to find that feature then I will not use that program.
... is my key principle. I'm capable of RTM'ing and Googling to find answers, but especially as I get older, I don't have the time I used to. Just yesterday, I was struggling with an Open Source mail server. Having to read separate (and usually incomplete) (not to mention incomprehensible at times) documentation on each component, THEN figure out how it all played together ... just to be honest, I briefly (briefly!) considered telling Corporate that we needed to just bite the bullet and go with an Exchange Server with full support.
Fortunately, I got this one working (again), and it's holding for now. But my #1 complaint is the lack of clear, easy-to-follow documentation. I love F/OSS -- I run Suse at home, and I've fallen head-over-heels for VirtualBox -- but this is my biggest complaint. We have a lot of brilliant coders working in F/OSS. We need to attract some equally-brilliant technical writers to donate time to explain how the stuff works in the real world.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Why is it hard to imagine? People will pay money for something if it saves them time, or is simply more pleasant to use. It's software after all - free isn't the best drawcard if the software is crap to begin with, and goodness-knows there's a ton of crap open source software out there.
So, my complaint list:
1. Lack of user-testing
2. Incomplete, incomprehensible, multi-format documentation.
3. Lack of quality control (eg. automated testing)
4. Unannounced drop of support on certain projects.
5. A plethora of linux distributions makes it difficult to choose.
6. Too many configuration formats.
7. The UNIX framework is not mature anymore and because of its design flaws, responds horribly to new demands.
8. Too many different programming languages make it difficult for new talent to drop in or to integrate different approaches.
9. KISS principle is broken too many times.
10. Featuritis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep)
Ironically (Other than #5 and #7 needing rewording) that is the exact list of complaints I have against most of the commercial software packages I have to work with!
If you replace the word 'linux distro' with 'windows release' in #5, and replace 'unix' with the list of 20 frameworks used in windows for #7, then it is an exact match.
For many FOSS applications the UI isn't nearly as polished as the commercial alternatives. This might be partially because UI designers want to get paid for the work (perhaps not a dedicated to the free community as sofware developers). The commercial alernatives invest in easy-to-use (watered down) configuration utilities that make it easy to set up. Contrast apache (perhaps the best of the FOSS) with IIS. Apache is in many ways a much better program, but the configuration is via a really obscure configuration file--and if you do something wrong you've broken it. ISS has a slick UI with nice dropdowns and checkboxes. MS spent as much effort on the UI as they did on the actual product. This is very different than FOSS.
Secondly, the documentation is typically better on commercial software than FOSS (there are some expections, mostly badly documented commercial software rather than well documented FOSS). Again, writers, proofreaders and editors want to get paid for their work.
I the long run there are probably only a score or so of free software applilications that are substainable. With the exception of these star applications (apache, linux, etc.) the real reason for using FOSS is that it's free. For example, if both MS Office and OO were both free, which would people choose? If they were both $99 (the home/student price of Office) which would they choose. Mostly free software is exploiting programs to give their work away for free--designers, editors and proofreaders don't fall for it.
Precisely.
I've used all kinds of OSes over the years, including Commodore BASIC/DOS and GEOS and AmigaOS (1,2,3) and MacOS (6,7,8,9,and 10) and Windoze (3,4,95,98,XP,wista) and Linux Ubuntu. When I was young and had tons of time to spare, I enjoyed hacking into my Commodore or Amiga to see what I could make them do, but now that I'm middle-aged I don't have many years left. I want my OS to "just work" like my car just works, so I can use my remaining time for other fun projects.
I gave Linux a fair shake, found it as frustrating as driving a Volkswagen Old Beetle that keeps breaking-down, and decided to go back to XP and MacOS. They cost money, but not that much, and that cost is offset by all the other free/libre programs like Firefox, Utorrent, Opera (not liberated but it is free), and so on.
BTW:
One other annoyance with Linux Ubuntu is when I switched my screen size to 640x480 to play some Atari and NES gaming. I found it impossible to switch it back to 1280x1024. Why? Because the dialogue box did not fit, and the "okay" button was off the screen! I ended-up stuck. That was pretty much the final straw that made me reach for my XP restore disc. What Linux needs is a user-friendliness consultant who is tasked to find all the problems that make the OS difficult for average people to navigate. Linux should be as easy to use as the Mac, or at least XP, and right now it's not even a quarter of the way there.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"Lots of users" does not equal "a large percentage".
The number of people who use Windows but loath it could be twice the number of total number Linux users combined, and it would still be less than 5% of number of people who use Windows. There are not that many people who hate Windows, the vast majority of windows users love it, especially XP and even Vista now that they've got most of the bugs ironed out.
There will never be an open source replacement for Windows, if anything replaces it it will be a closed-source OS like OSX, because programming the bits that make Windows easy to use and acceptable to a large user base are the very bits that nobody likes to write. They are, in fact, a pain in the ass to write and there is no real sense of accomplishment. That is why GUIs in Linux are horrible. Not just bad, but horrible. The rare GUI that is easy to use is a pleasant surprise.
With Windows, as well as with most proprietary software, some schmuck got paid to make sure all the bits that nobody likes to program work the way they are supposed to, and what you get is a GUI that is so easy to use nobody even thinks about it. This is one thing that open source developement is terrible at. Not bad, but terrible, and it is an area closed-source developement excels at. Usually the poor schmuck doing the GUI work is an intern or new guy making his way up the ranks, being told what to do by the high-paid GUI designer. Neither of those two exist in an open source project. If they do, it's very rare.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller