Ignoring this issue doesn't help free software. Telling people "It is just as easy you just have to learn it," when it isn't doesn't help, they'll just ignore you.
Thats why developers should ignore the users that ignore them. Those users that spend 5 seconds whining that a piece of OSS software is unusable (read: expects them to learn something - after finishing high school a long time ago!), expecting the developers to spend additional days of their lives to meet those 5-second-vague-idea requirements - should be ignored. They should have their internet disconnected.
The author is trying to say that OSS people need to stop with this attitude that it is just as usable, or that usability doesn't matter to popularity.
Its not that usability doesn't matter - it just has a lower priority. First the software has to actually try to do something. Then it shouldn't have too many bugs. Once you get passed the second, you have really gone a long way... And for OSS the problem is what can the developer do to continue allocating most of his free time to writing/fixing OSS software? The usability critics are acting like stakeholders, but are contributing nothing.
I believe the "usability doesn't matter" is just a polite way of saying "look, we need help to make the project better, not more opinions or ideas". If usability is _really_ a problem, then why are we having funding problems with OSS projects?
If you want OSS to start to become the dominant way of doing software, you have to make it as easy to use for the non-technical masses as possible.
Thats if we really need those non-technical masses. OSS will become the dominant way of doing software simply because its easier for the developers and cheaper for the corporations they work for.
Do we really need those "non-technical" masses continue writing badly formatted word documents with no structure (being unrelated to information or knowledge), browsing web pages where no two pages are alike in usability, expecting OSS to be identical even in colors and in icons to Windows (otherwise its "unusable"), and as users potentially offering nothing more than "popularity" for OSS. And the only time they use the keyboard is typing something in the search field - using 2 fingers in total. And what is stopping the developers from replacing those users with simple shell scripts? Definitely not PROFIT.
And then come usability experts, who... amazingly... try to make it easier for the users!
You especially want the scripting part of the applications used most of the time. Once you know how to use it (e.g. Vim), you don't think about it in terms of usability. Excel has VB for a reason - programming is the best tool for some jobs, no matter how user unfriendly typing code may be.
I spent countless hours getting used to Vim. Result? Incredible speed and more time spent on creating value instead of manually doing things the computer can do for me.
Desktop? Fluxbox. Lightning fast and for complex key-combos. Takes hours to set up right, but you do that only once in a lifetime.
Linux? Ubuntu. Less time spent using it. (apt + upgrades).
Would I recommend any of these to anyone? Highly unlikely. Do I regret investing my time learning to use those completely unusable pieces of software? Not even a bit.
Why not Windows? Scripting it is almost (?) impossible and you can neither customize the gui or change keyboard shortcuts or even install software just by selecting packages from a list. Try and get the CD to eject when a file has finished downloading to see what I mean. One line in bash is enough in Linux.
Usability always becomes less important after a while of using a piece of software. Try using Windows for 8 years and see how much less "usable" it becomes.
Efficiency is the next step - unless everything is new to you and you only need to use something once.
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Ignoring this issue doesn't help free software. Telling people "It is just as easy you just have to learn it," when it isn't doesn't help, they'll just ignore you.
Thats why developers should ignore the users that ignore them. Those users that spend 5 seconds whining that a piece of OSS software is unusable (read: expects them to learn something - after finishing high school a long time ago!), expecting the developers to spend additional days of their lives to meet those 5-second-vague-idea requirements - should be ignored. They should have their internet disconnected.
The author is trying to say that OSS people need to stop with this attitude that it is just as usable, or that usability doesn't matter to popularity.
Its not that usability doesn't matter - it just has a lower priority. First the software has to actually try to do something. Then it shouldn't have too many bugs. Once you get passed the second, you have really gone a long way... And for OSS the problem is what can the developer do to continue allocating most of his free time to writing/fixing OSS software? The usability critics are acting like stakeholders, but are contributing nothing.
I believe the "usability doesn't matter" is just a polite way of saying "look, we need help to make the project better, not more opinions or ideas". If usability is _really_ a problem, then why are we having funding problems with OSS projects?
If you want OSS to start to become the dominant way of doing software, you have to make it as easy to use for the non-technical masses as possible.
Thats if we really need those non-technical masses. OSS will become the dominant way of doing software simply because its easier for the developers and cheaper for the corporations they work for.
Do we really need those "non-technical" masses continue writing badly formatted word documents with no structure (being unrelated to information or knowledge), browsing web pages where no two pages are alike in usability, expecting OSS to be identical even in colors and in icons to Windows (otherwise its "unusable"), and as users potentially offering nothing more than "popularity" for OSS. And the only time they use the keyboard is typing something in the search field - using 2 fingers in total. And what is stopping the developers from replacing those users with simple shell scripts? Definitely not PROFIT.
And then come usability experts, who ... amazingly ... try to make it easier for the users!
You especially want the scripting part of the applications used most of the time. Once you know how to use it (e.g. Vim), you don't think about it in terms of usability. Excel has VB for a reason - programming is the best tool for some jobs, no matter how user unfriendly typing code may be.
I spent countless hours getting used to Vim. Result? Incredible speed and more time spent on creating value instead of manually doing things the computer can do for me.
Desktop? Fluxbox. Lightning fast and for complex key-combos. Takes hours to set up right, but you do that only once in a lifetime.
Linux? Ubuntu. Less time spent using it. (apt + upgrades).
Would I recommend any of these to anyone? Highly unlikely. Do I regret investing my time learning to use those completely unusable pieces of software? Not even a bit.
Why not Windows? Scripting it is almost (?) impossible and you can neither customize the gui or change keyboard shortcuts or even install software just by selecting packages from a list. Try and get the CD to eject when a file has finished downloading to see what I mean. One line in bash is enough in Linux.
Usability always becomes less important after a while of using a piece of software. Try using Windows for 8 years and see how much less "usable" it becomes.
Efficiency is the next step - unless everything is new to you and you only need to use something once.