"This document basically tells people of OTHER TECHNICAL THINGS (like making icons for programmers and writing documentation for programmers and reporting bugs to programmers) that they can do."
Since when is creating icons technical things? What about writing USER documentation?
"This is irrelevant to the issue of design and usability"
That is irrelevant. You're saying only programmers work on OSS projects. That is not true.
"Provides a series of slides that explains things like "what usability is." A nice start, but that hardly means that the end product will be designed with usability in mind."
That's what the entire project is about! To convince app developers to think about usability! That so far, they're succeeding. More and more application developers are fixing their GUIs to be HIG-compliant. Also take a look at the traffic of the Usability mailing list.
"Let us not forget that the usability thing is being spearheaded by Sun, who sure as hell isnt doing it for altruistic reasons."
Aha. Let's see... Slashdotter A: "Open source apps have bad usability because the developers write it for themselves. Commercial software have good usability because their customers demand that." Slashdotter B: "Sun is not doing it for altruistic reasons."
Hm? Contradicting claims? Sun's customers demand a good, usable, intuitive GUI. Sun is using GNOME as their GUI in Solaris. What's wrong with Sun helping to make GNOME more usable?
That's why the documentation, translation and usability projects are seperate projects!
"Oh stop it, you're making me laugh. Mozilla fails even the most rudimentary usability tests because of its speed (or lack thereof)."
Since when? On any modern system (my Athlon 1.4 Ghz with 128 MB RAM for example), Mozilla runs just as fast and snappy as any other application. Stop using Mozilla on that Pentium 166. Even on that AMD K6-400 with 128 MB RAM that my friend has, Mozilla runs just fine. And of course I'm talking about post-1.0 Mozillas here.
"If you knew a damn thing about usability rather than playing the old linux game of equating "fancy gui" with usability, you'd recognize this. Usability is a user-centric-ness that needs to be considered in many ways, and Mozilla fails by a mile."
Oh you mean those thousands of happy non-geek Mozilla/Netscape 7 users are all fake? And what about Netscape? They're a company. Their customers demand a good product. Isn't it common Slashdot knowledge that companies create good and usable GUIs?
"There's a world of difference between getting an answer to a technical question by supplication and driving the development of a new product."
What's that got anything to do with this?
"OSS is developer, not market driven. Where it is more market driven, it's basically being used by for-profit companies to serve some auxillary goal (like Sun's support of Gnome)."
Then what are you complaining about? Are you saying NOBODY (not open source, not companies) creates usable GUIs?
"This is best done in person. OSS suffers because of this, in general, as well."
I don't get you. You say OSS suffers from bad usability design. Yet you also complain about that companies only do it for the money. What's your point?
"Commercial open source software, that sideline game through which companies position themselves in a to take advantage of the work of free labor while bundling this with their own proprietary extensions as a 'value add' does care about usability."
*Ahem*. Mozilla is sponsored by Netscape...
"RedHat does everything in its power to keep the usable bits proprietary"
What bits are proprietary? The installer is GPL'ed. The configuration tools are GPL'ed. What exactly in RedHat is proprietary?
"Big picture: at the end of the day, you STILL can't reliably cut and paste complex objects between apps that dont explicitly know about each others file types in linux systems."
What complex objects?
"You STILL dont have so much as a simple, fast, usable web browser that comes close to IE."
What's wrong with Konqueror? Personally, I find Galeon and Mozilla far and far more usable than IE. The little details like middle clicking on links, tabs and popup blocking make my browsing experience far more pleasant than IE ever gave me. I'm not the only one with this opinion, there are many, many more people out there.
And they are meaningful if people DO follow them. Take a look at the Usability mailing list. Lots and lots of application developers are fixing their GUIs to be HIG compliant.
"They're about true dependency resolution - if you can configure the make file, chances are you won't hit any snags when running the program, unlike certain other binary package format I know."
That's what the Autopackage project is about: sane autoconf-like depency resolution for binary packages.
"Simple requests like this (FRIENDLY and REASONED requests, not rants) are ignored or quickly blown off."
Simple requests? Reasonable? Do you have any idea how hard it is to port a Motif app to QT or GTK? It's like porting an MFC app to Linux. In other words, almost a complete rewrite! Do you think it's weird that they deny your request?
"As long as THEY can use the app just fine,"
And the 300 thousand OTHER users out there who ARE happy about it. Face it, just because a few people complain won't convince them. If you wrote a big operating system and 2 people on Slashdot are complaining about it, will you immediately rewrite your OS just to please those 2 (and possibly piss off everybody else)?
"This is the area that OSS cannot compete with commercial. In commercial software development,"
You're contradicting yourself. OpenOffice.org is commercial open source software!
"I consider GNOME and KDE big failures of open source. They could have epitomized great design, they could have demonstrated how to write reliable, fast software. Instead, they are bug ridden bloat monsters. I'm ready to puke when I see my notebook start to swap when I open konqueror."
Then you are using outdated hardware. On my Athlon 1.4 Ghz with 128 MB RAM, everything runs smoothly. Konqueror loads almost instantanously. You can't blame them for taking advantage of modern hardware. This isn't bloat, this is using more resources in order to do some things better or more efficiently. If you have little memory: bad for you. You shouldn't use GNOME or KDE on low memory systems anyway. But for modern systems, they're great. Let's face it: there's no way they could write a good usable desktop environment if they think "OMG we shouldn't use more than 32 MB RAM! let's remove that and that! let's give the user an empty desktop with only 1 button and get rid of all the nice little features!" Look at Windows XP for example. Most Slashdotters consider Windows XP as a great and extremely usable and friendly operating system. And it's a big resource hog. Is it popular? Is it successful? Definitely. Or what about MacOS X? Slashdotters love that even more, even those who have never used it before. Nobody with an older computer wants to run MacOS X. Is it successful? Definitely. Success isn't measured in resource usage.
"Nautilus, for example, is the slowest piece of file managing software I have ever seen. I always thought it is a parody rather than a file manager, how can anyone use anything this slow in his day to day life? Sure it looks good, if you have the time to wait half an hour for it to draw your home directory."
Wake up dude, this is the present! You have obviously never heard of Nautilus 2. It is fast, faaaast. My home folder loads in 1 second. Yes you heard me, 1 second. The speedups compare to version 1 are huge.
"How many times have we heard open sourcers (including Linus) talk with pride about how they rightfully ignore user requests and just do their own thing?"
Zero times. Maybe Linus does talk about that, but let's face it: how many users know enough about the kernel to make a useful suggestion?
Now, compare it to more user-oriented projects like GNOME and KDE. Their community of users and developers always give good responses. Always. What's this cultural shift you're talking about?
All projects for non-hackers. And they're quite busy.
"Gimp and Xfig - my two favorite whipping boys, are examples number one and two of programs that nominally have the features, but in practice are painful to use compared to their closed-source equivalents (Photoshop and Visio)."
Well course. They were made in a time when Linux GUIs were just born and developers had almost no experience in good UI design. Compare the situation to today. GNOME 2.0? KDE 3.0? Evolution? Mozilla? All very mature software with modern and usable GUIs - because the developers have more experience now!
"* culturally, the OSS 3l337 reject anybody without super-skills. don't even pretend that this isnt true."
Oh great, the old "elitism" argument again. I can't hack the kernel. I don't know assembly. I'm not a Unix expert. I'm not l33t. Yet if I join a GNOME mailing list, and I ask things carefully and politely, providing all the necessery details, I almost always get a good and clear answer (unless of course, nobody knows an answer). I never, I repeat, never get flamed down or told RTFM.
The elists are - what? - 5% of the entire population? The only place I've seen developers occasionally say "RTFM" is on the MPlayer developers list. On mailing lists for popular projects like GNOME and KDE, nobody tells new users to RTFM. Except sometimes as a joke (with a smilie of course). Also, on IRC channels such as #linuxhelp, people are also often friendly and helpful.
Obviously, you are brainwashed by the popular Slashdot prejudgement that OSS developers are elists. That is simply not true. Can you give me any proof that most OSS developers are elists? I don't think so.
"# Technically, there are no mechanisms in place for this. CVS is about code. The development model is essentially about continuous 'patching' of the software rather than grand rearchitecting, which design considerations often require."
Wrong. If you say they don't design when they first started the project, then yes, I agree with you partially. Mike spent months thinking about Autopackage's design before he actually started writing code. Most open source project design as they write the code. They learn from their mistakes and make a better design next time. A good example is KDE 1.0 to 2.0 --> a complete rewrite. They learned from their mistake and made a new, better architecture. In fact, the design is so good, that KDE 3.0 is mostly a cleanup release with no mater architectural changes, and is mostly source compatible with 2.0. Another good example is the Linux kernel. The new build system has been carefully designed from the ground up, and can't be applied in small continuous patches.
"economically, there's little hope of getting quality designers involved. Programmers barely get recognition in OSS (blowing to hell ESR's naive theories, btw). Who would care who designed what? How do you get street cred as a designer? I mean, it could happen, but it would take a pretty big mental shift."
GNOME Usability Project anyone? A lot of usability studies are contributed by Sun and Ximian. Sun also contributed a lot of user documentation.
"Design = customer focus. OSS too often has this not. Profit drive causes customer focus. Alas."
"Just as it is standard practice to add Help->About to an application, so it should perhaps become standard practice in the OSS world to add a Help->Feedback item. This send feedback info."
I don't think that will work. Why? Because most people simply don't care. If they think the app suck, then they'll delete it. The last thing most people think is "Let me send feedback to the authors". I mean, a lot of people I know don't even know what version of Internet Explorer they have (they don't even know they have to look in Help->About!!!!)
There are of course always some people who do send feedback. However, a lot of them are very stupid (no offense intended, but it's true). Things like "it doesnt work plz fix it tnx" or "yo dude do me a favor would ya fix this bug, LaTeRZz!" or "It doesn't work." are not uncommon. How do I know what to do if all I get is "it doesn't work" or "it crashes"? Also, for smaller projects, the authors do not always have time (school/work/social life/whatever).
I think it's much better to teach the users how to give good feedback. Or better: encourage them to contribute. The problem is: are people willing to learn or to help?
While some open source developers work on a project for personal reasons, others don't. Everybody has their own reason for contribution. I, myself, am working on the Autopackage project because I want to make third-party software installation on Linux easier (and get rid of all the flame on Slashdot and other places about Linux software being hard to install) to make this world a better place, and partially because I want a packaging system that doesn't rely on a database.
Everybody has their own reasons. Some do it for themselves, some do it for others, some do it for fun, and some do it for other reasons. There is no one single answer to why this and that happens.
Example: "open source produces bad GUIs and have no usability experts". Huh? Have you guys never heard of all those usability studies Sun contributed to GNOME? Or the GNOME/KDE Usability Project? Or the GNOME Human User Interface Guide? I mean, they've been here for months, yet people still talk as if they don't exist. I can only conclude one thing: the world is heavily underinformed or are biased. Go read some websites!
Again: there is no one single answer to why this and that happens. People saying that open source can't do x because of their ego or whatever have a single-minded view on open source.
Huh? You had to edit config files to make it work properly?
That's a bug. You should send a bug report. I just clicked on the KMail icon, filled in my mail server information and personal information, and it just worked.
"with where microsoft makes their browsers go faster"
And slower with non-IIS servers.
"they're getting MOST content faster than they would with crapzilla"
So you're saying most webservers run IIS, not Apache? Funny, last month Apache had a market share of 60%. If you don't believe me, check out NetCraft: --> IE users actually get MOST content slower because MOST servers are running Apache. Apache has twice as much market share as IIS. Not to mention all the other small non-IIS web servers.
"If people can't stand that 1/10 of a second difference, then they would try to get a new browser."
If they know there is such a thing called "browser". For average users, that 'E' icon is the Internet itself. And the percentage of people who know that alternative browsers even exist are becoming smaller and smaller.
"so? they can do whatever they want with their own program."
Oh c'mon, that non-argument is so old already.
Yes, you can do whatever you want with your own stuff, under normal conditions. I'll give you 2 examples:
Let's say you make your own knife. You can do whatever you want... except killing people or doing other things that the law prohibits!
Let's say there's a certain person you don't like. You don't let him enter your own house. Nothing wrong with that. But what if you own all the supermarkets in the country (--> see the relation with Microsoft's monopoly), except that 1 little supermarket 600 miles away, and you prohibits every supermarket from selling stuff to that person? Even though you own those supermarkets, that wouldn't be fair, would it?
Microsoft is a monopoly and have a huge market share, you cannot deny that. Therebefore, they are directly responsible for the slowness of 95% of the desktop users. Furthermore, average users are not even aware that alternative browsers exists, and some sites REQUIRE you to use IE.
With great power comes great responsibility. This isn't just a matter of "they can do whatever they want with their own program".
The article posters may be anti-Microsoft, but that doesn't matter: the majority (the Slashdot community) isn't. (In fact, most of them use Windows, not Linux.) The few anti-MS people behind Slashdot simply can't compete to the milions of pro-MS Slashdotters.
I don't know where you get those "95% of which are blabla" from, but I see 800+ comments: - 70% "the article is fake!" or "I tested it but IE use standard TCP requests. fuck you anti-Microsoft Linux zealots!" - 10% "MS sucks" - 10% junk/flamebait/trolls/crapfloods
Sorry, but your claims are completely false. Slashdot is everything but anti-MS. Why do you think your post is modded as +5 Insightful? That Slashdot is an anti-MS site is simply false. People have been saying how Slashdot is anti-MS for centuries but every time I browse through the comments, there are always lots and lots of pro-MS comments, a lot of them are even modded +3/+4/+5.
No way!!! OS X is the best OS in existence!!! Because all the 520 Slashdot posters say so in their "Linux sucks OS X rules" posts! OS X's GUI slow? Are you out of your mind? Of course it's not slow! The highly advanced Aqua GUI is the fastest GUI in existence because of OpenGL acceleration! I don't have a Mac but Slashdot says so so it must be true!
"Are you high? What exactly are you trying to prove anyways?"
That, in contradiction to popular belief, Slashdot is NOT an anti-Windows pro-Linux place. Duh. There are only very few pro-Linux-anti-Windows people, in spite of what you think. Ditto for "elitists", "zealots", or whatever people come up with tomorrow. They're like 5% of the entire community.
"Using Windows out of necessity (propietary software for the system)."
So? Still pro-Windows.
"Skimmed it, but it seems to be offering suggestions for Linux to compete, not ripping it apart."
But still pro-Windows. I never said those posts rip Linux apart, I said they are pro-Windows.
"because if I weren't using a Mac I would most likely run Linux"
"but I see no way Linux will compete as a mass desktop OS until it becomes far easier for the average user."
Not at all. According to a Slashdot poll from a while ago, most visitors use Windows, not Linux. That (and the fact that pro-Windows posts often get modded up) also kills the myth that Slashdot is a pro-Linux anti-Windows site.
Because it makes ignorant people think X is a ripoff of Microsoft(r) Windows(tm). Seriously, look around you! Many, [b]many[/b] people think X is some kind of shameless clone of MS Windows just because everybody is calling it, improperly, "X-Windows"! This ignorance must stop, X has nothing to do with MS Windows and it's about time people realize that!
"so if someone's dumb enough to actually give me something for free, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth."
Ah, so you will throw away all your free Christmas/birthday presents? What about all that food/toys/stuff your parents gave you for free when you were a little kid?
Slashdot Mirror
"Just because most servers are apache doesn't mean most content comes from them, buddy."
Then give me some proof that most content comes from IIS servers. I've backed up my claims, now it's time to backup yours.
"That's like telling me that the newbie car mechanic doesn't know what a wrench is."
Wrong comparison. Newbie car mechanic == newbie programmer. Newbie car driver == newbie computer user.
"This document basically tells people of OTHER TECHNICAL THINGS (like making icons for programmers and writing documentation for programmers and reporting bugs to programmers) that they can do."
Since when is creating icons technical things? What about writing USER documentation?
"This is irrelevant to the issue of design and usability"
That is irrelevant. You're saying only programmers work on OSS projects. That is not true.
"Provides a series of slides that explains things like "what usability is." A nice start, but that hardly means that the end product will be designed with usability in mind."
That's what the entire project is about! To convince app developers to think about usability! That so far, they're succeeding. More and more application developers are fixing their GUIs to be HIG-compliant. Also take a look at the traffic of the Usability mailing list.
"Let us not forget that the usability thing is being spearheaded by Sun, who sure as hell isnt doing it for altruistic reasons."
Aha. Let's see...
Slashdotter A: "Open source apps have bad usability because the developers write it for themselves. Commercial software have good usability because their customers demand that."
Slashdotter B: "Sun is not doing it for altruistic reasons."
Hm? Contradicting claims?
Sun's customers demand a good, usable, intuitive GUI. Sun is using GNOME as their GUI in Solaris. What's wrong with Sun helping to make GNOME more usable?
"Documentation + Translation != Usability != Design"
That's why the documentation, translation and usability projects are seperate projects!
"Oh stop it, you're making me laugh. Mozilla fails even the most rudimentary usability tests because of its speed (or lack thereof)."
Since when? On any modern system (my Athlon 1.4 Ghz with 128 MB RAM for example), Mozilla runs just as fast and snappy as any other application. Stop using Mozilla on that Pentium 166. Even on that AMD K6-400 with 128 MB RAM that my friend has, Mozilla runs just fine.
And of course I'm talking about post-1.0 Mozillas here.
"If you knew a damn thing about usability rather than playing the old linux game of equating "fancy gui" with usability, you'd recognize this. Usability is a user-centric-ness that needs to be considered in many ways, and Mozilla fails by a mile."
Oh you mean those thousands of happy non-geek Mozilla/Netscape 7 users are all fake?
And what about Netscape? They're a company. Their customers demand a good product. Isn't it common Slashdot knowledge that companies create good and usable GUIs?
"There's a world of difference between getting an answer to a technical question by supplication and driving the development of a new product."
What's that got anything to do with this?
"OSS is developer, not market driven. Where it is more market driven, it's basically being used by for-profit companies to serve some auxillary goal (like Sun's support of Gnome)."
Then what are you complaining about? Are you saying NOBODY (not open source, not companies) creates usable GUIs?
"This is best done in person. OSS suffers because of this, in general, as well."
I don't get you. You say OSS suffers from bad usability design. Yet you also complain about that companies only do it for the money. What's your point?
"Commercial open source software, that sideline game through which companies position themselves in a to take advantage of the work of free labor while bundling this with their own proprietary extensions as a 'value add' does care about usability."
*Ahem*. Mozilla is sponsored by Netscape...
"RedHat does everything in its power to keep the usable bits proprietary"
What bits are proprietary? The installer is GPL'ed. The configuration tools are GPL'ed. What exactly in RedHat is proprietary?
"Big picture: at the end of the day, you STILL can't reliably cut and paste complex objects between apps that dont explicitly know about each others file types in linux systems."
What complex objects?
"You STILL dont have so much as a simple, fast, usable web browser that comes close to IE."
What's wrong with Konqueror?
Personally, I find Galeon and Mozilla far and far more usable than IE. The little details like middle clicking on links, tabs and popup blocking make my browsing experience far more pleasant than IE ever gave me. I'm not the only one with this opinion, there are many, many more people out there.
And they are meaningful if people DO follow them. Take a look at the Usability mailing list. Lots and lots of application developers are fixing their GUIs to be HIG compliant.
"They're about true dependency resolution - if you can configure the make file, chances are you won't hit any snags when running the program, unlike certain other binary package format I know."
That's what the Autopackage project is about: sane autoconf-like depency resolution for binary packages.
"Simple requests like this (FRIENDLY and REASONED requests, not rants) are ignored or quickly blown off."
Simple requests? Reasonable? Do you have any idea how hard it is to port a Motif app to QT or GTK? It's like porting an MFC app to Linux. In other words, almost a complete rewrite! Do you think it's weird that they deny your request?
"As long as THEY can use the app just fine,"
And the 300 thousand OTHER users out there who ARE happy about it. Face it, just because a few people complain won't convince them. If you wrote a big operating system and 2 people on Slashdot are complaining about it, will you immediately rewrite your OS just to please those 2 (and possibly piss off everybody else)?
"This is the area that OSS cannot compete with commercial. In commercial software development,"
You're contradicting yourself. OpenOffice.org is commercial open source software!
"I consider GNOME and KDE big failures of open source. They could have epitomized great design, they could have demonstrated how to write reliable, fast software. Instead, they are bug ridden bloat monsters. I'm ready to puke when I see my notebook start to swap when I open konqueror."
Then you are using outdated hardware. On my Athlon 1.4 Ghz with 128 MB RAM, everything runs smoothly. Konqueror loads almost instantanously.
You can't blame them for taking advantage of modern hardware. This isn't bloat, this is using more resources in order to do some things better or more efficiently. If you have little memory: bad for you. You shouldn't use GNOME or KDE on low memory systems anyway. But for modern systems, they're great.
Let's face it: there's no way they could write a good usable desktop environment if they think "OMG we shouldn't use more than 32 MB RAM! let's remove that and that! let's give the user an empty desktop with only 1 button and get rid of all the nice little features!"
Look at Windows XP for example. Most Slashdotters consider Windows XP as a great and extremely usable and friendly operating system. And it's a big resource hog. Is it popular? Is it successful? Definitely. Or what about MacOS X? Slashdotters love that even more, even those who have never used it before. Nobody with an older computer wants to run MacOS X. Is it successful? Definitely.
Success isn't measured in resource usage.
"Nautilus, for example, is the slowest piece of file managing software I have ever seen. I always thought it is a parody rather than a file manager, how can anyone use anything this slow in his day to day life? Sure it looks good, if you have the time to wait half an hour for it to draw your home directory."
Wake up dude, this is the present! You have obviously never heard of Nautilus 2. It is fast, faaaast. My home folder loads in 1 second. Yes you heard me, 1 second. The speedups compare to version 1 are huge.
"How many times have we heard open sourcers (including Linus) talk with pride about how they rightfully ignore user requests and just do their own thing?"
Zero times. Maybe Linus does talk about that, but let's face it: how many users know enough about the kernel to make a useful suggestion?
Now, compare it to more user-oriented projects like GNOME and KDE. Their community of users and developers always give good responses. Always. What's this cultural shift you're talking about?
*sigh* There we go again.
The Slashdot opensource prejudgements must die. Now.
"The problem is as well is that there is no plausible way to get designers and similar 'soft skill' people into the OSS cycle today:"
*Ahem*
How to join the GNOME project for non-hackers FAQ
GNOME Usability Project
GNOME Documentation Project
GNOME Translation Project
And of course the KDE documentation/translation teams.
All projects for non-hackers. And they're quite busy.
"Gimp and Xfig - my two favorite whipping boys, are examples number one and two of programs that nominally have the features, but in practice are painful to use compared to their closed-source equivalents (Photoshop and Visio)."
Well course. They were made in a time when Linux GUIs were just born and developers had almost no experience in good UI design.
Compare the situation to today. GNOME 2.0? KDE 3.0? Evolution? Mozilla? All very mature software with modern and usable GUIs - because the developers have more experience now!
"* culturally, the OSS 3l337 reject anybody without super-skills. don't even pretend that this isnt true."
Oh great, the old "elitism" argument again.
I can't hack the kernel. I don't know assembly. I'm not a Unix expert. I'm not l33t. Yet if I join a GNOME mailing list, and I ask things carefully and politely, providing all the necessery details, I almost always get a good and clear answer (unless of course, nobody knows an answer). I never, I repeat, never get flamed down or told RTFM.
The elists are - what? - 5% of the entire population? The only place I've seen developers occasionally say "RTFM" is on the MPlayer developers list. On mailing lists for popular projects like GNOME and KDE, nobody tells new users to RTFM. Except sometimes as a joke (with a smilie of course). Also, on IRC channels such as #linuxhelp, people are also often friendly and helpful.
Obviously, you are brainwashed by the popular Slashdot prejudgement that OSS developers are elists. That is simply not true. Can you give me any proof that most OSS developers are elists? I don't think so.
"# Technically, there are no mechanisms in place for this. CVS is about code. The development model is essentially about continuous 'patching' of the software rather than grand rearchitecting, which design considerations often require."
Wrong.
If you say they don't design when they first started the project, then yes, I agree with you partially. Mike spent months thinking about Autopackage's design before he actually started writing code.
Most open source project design as they write the code. They learn from their mistakes and make a better design next time.
A good example is KDE 1.0 to 2.0 --> a complete rewrite. They learned from their mistake and made a new, better architecture. In fact, the design is so good, that KDE 3.0 is mostly a cleanup release with no mater architectural changes, and is mostly source compatible with 2.0.
Another good example is the Linux kernel. The new build system has been carefully designed from the ground up, and can't be applied in small continuous patches.
"economically, there's little hope of getting quality designers involved. Programmers barely get recognition in OSS (blowing to hell ESR's naive theories, btw). Who would care who designed what? How do you get street cred as a designer? I mean, it could happen, but it would take a pretty big mental shift."
GNOME Usability Project anyone? A lot of usability studies are contributed by Sun and Ximian. Sun also contributed a lot of user documentation.
"Design = customer focus. OSS too often has this not. Profit drive causes customer focus. Alas."
Commercial open source software. 'nuff said.
"Just as it is standard practice to add Help->About to an application, so it should perhaps become standard practice in the OSS world to add a Help->Feedback item. This send feedback info."
I don't think that will work. Why? Because most people simply don't care. If they think the app suck, then they'll delete it. The last thing most people think is "Let me send feedback to the authors". I mean, a lot of people I know don't even know what version of Internet Explorer they have (they don't even know they have to look in Help->About!!!!)
There are of course always some people who do send feedback. However, a lot of them are very stupid (no offense intended, but it's true). Things like "it doesnt work plz fix it tnx" or "yo dude do me a favor would ya fix this bug, LaTeRZz!" or "It doesn't work." are not uncommon. How do I know what to do if all I get is "it doesn't work" or "it crashes"? Also, for smaller projects, the authors do not always have time (school/work/social life/whatever).
I think it's much better to teach the users how to give good feedback. Or better: encourage them to contribute. The problem is: are people willing to learn or to help?
While some open source developers work on a project for personal reasons, others don't. Everybody has their own reason for contribution.
I, myself, am working on the Autopackage project because I want to make third-party software installation on Linux easier (and get rid of all the flame on Slashdot and other places about Linux software being hard to install) to make this world a better place, and partially because I want a packaging system that doesn't rely on a database.
Everybody has their own reasons. Some do it for themselves, some do it for others, some do it for fun, and some do it for other reasons. There is no one single answer to why this and that happens.
Example: "open source produces bad GUIs and have no usability experts". Huh? Have you guys never heard of all those usability studies Sun contributed to GNOME? Or the GNOME/KDE Usability Project? Or the GNOME Human User Interface Guide? I mean, they've been here for months, yet people still talk as if they don't exist.
I can only conclude one thing: the world is heavily underinformed or are biased. Go read some websites!
Again: there is no one single answer to why this and that happens. People saying that open source can't do x because of their ego or whatever have a single-minded view on open source.
Huh? You had to edit config files to make it work properly?
That's a bug. You should send a bug report. I just clicked on the KMail icon, filled in my mail server information and personal information, and it just worked.
"with where microsoft makes their browsers go faster"
And slower with non-IIS servers.
"they're getting MOST content faster than they would with crapzilla"
So you're saying most webservers run IIS, not Apache? Funny, last month Apache had a market share of 60%.
If you don't believe me, check out NetCraft: --> IE users actually get MOST content slower because MOST servers are running Apache. Apache has twice as much market share as IIS. Not to mention all the other small non-IIS web servers.
"If people can't stand that 1/10 of a second difference, then they would try to get a new browser."
If they know there is such a thing called "browser". For average users, that 'E' icon is the Internet itself. And the percentage of people who know that alternative browsers even exist are becoming smaller and smaller.
"so? they can do whatever they want with their own program."
Oh c'mon, that non-argument is so old already.
Yes, you can do whatever you want with your own stuff, under normal conditions. I'll give you 2 examples:
Let's say you make your own knife. You can do whatever you want... except killing people or doing other things that the law prohibits!
Let's say there's a certain person you don't like. You don't let him enter your own house. Nothing wrong with that.
But what if you own all the supermarkets in the country (--> see the relation with Microsoft's monopoly), except that 1 little supermarket 600 miles away, and you prohibits every supermarket from selling stuff to that person? Even though you own those supermarkets, that wouldn't be fair, would it?
Microsoft is a monopoly and have a huge market share, you cannot deny that. Therebefore, they are directly responsible for the slowness of 95% of the desktop users. Furthermore, average users are not even aware that alternative browsers exists, and some sites REQUIRE you to use IE.
With great power comes great responsibility. This isn't just a matter of "they can do whatever they want with their own program".
The article posters may be anti-Microsoft, but that doesn't matter: the majority (the Slashdot community) isn't. (In fact, most of them use Windows, not Linux.) The few anti-MS people behind Slashdot simply can't compete to the milions of pro-MS Slashdotters.
I don't know where you get those "95% of which are blabla" from, but I see 800+ comments:
- 70% "the article is fake!" or "I tested it but IE use standard TCP requests. fuck you anti-Microsoft Linux zealots!"
- 10% "MS sucks"
- 10% junk/flamebait/trolls/crapfloods
Sorry, but your claims are completely false. Slashdot is everything but anti-MS. Why do you think your post is modded as +5 Insightful?
That Slashdot is an anti-MS site is simply false. People have been saying how Slashdot is anti-MS for centuries but every time I browse through the comments, there are always lots and lots of pro-MS comments, a lot of them are even modded +3/+4/+5.
It [b]does[/b] hurt. IE becomes slower when trying to access webpages from non-IIS servers!
No way!!! OS X is the best OS in existence!!! Because all the 520 Slashdot posters say so in their "Linux sucks OS X rules" posts!
OS X's GUI slow? Are you out of your mind? Of course it's not slow! The highly advanced Aqua GUI is the fastest GUI in existence because of OpenGL acceleration! I don't have a Mac but Slashdot says so so it must be true!
"Why are you trying to prove that?"
Why are you asking this?
"And they weren't really pro-Windows (the last 4 that is)"
Sure, ignore the fact that I explicitly stated that the last few links are anti-Linux instead of pro-Windows...
"Now, if you could figure out the number of slashdot accounts that are throw away troll accounts, then I'd be impressed (I'd guess there's ~9,000)."
Urgh... make that 9,000 milion.
"Are you high? What exactly are you trying to prove anyways?"
That, in contradiction to popular belief, Slashdot is NOT an anti-Windows pro-Linux place. Duh.
There are only very few pro-Linux-anti-Windows people, in spite of what you think. Ditto for "elitists", "zealots", or whatever people come up with tomorrow. They're like 5% of the entire community.
"Using Windows out of necessity (propietary software for the system)."
So? Still pro-Windows.
"Skimmed it, but it seems to be offering suggestions for Linux to compete, not ripping it apart."
But still pro-Windows. I never said those posts rip Linux apart, I said they are pro-Windows.
"because if I weren't using a Mac I would most likely run Linux"
"but I see no way Linux will compete as a mass desktop OS until it becomes far easier for the average user."
Then what are these?
+3, Interesting
+4, Informative
Look pretty pro-Windows to me. And high moderated too.
Or how about these highly moderated anti-Linux posts?
Linux UIs suck
Linux is too late
XFree86 is a mess
A long way to go
"Ironic, nes pas?"
Not at all. According to a Slashdot poll from a while ago, most visitors use Windows, not Linux.
That (and the fact that pro-Windows posts often get modded up) also kills the myth that Slashdot is a pro-Linux anti-Windows site.
Because it makes ignorant people think X is a ripoff of Microsoft(r) Windows(tm). Seriously, look around you! Many, [b]many[/b] people think X is some kind of shameless clone of MS Windows just because everybody is calling it, improperly, "X-Windows"! This ignorance must stop, X has nothing to do with MS Windows and it's about time people realize that!
"so if someone's dumb enough to actually give me something for free, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth."
Ah, so you will throw away all your free Christmas/birthday presents? What about all that food/toys/stuff your parents gave you for free when you were a little kid?
That is what Autopackage is for.
"I hate to say it, but maybe /. doesn't like stories that make linix look bad."
The fact that you are modded up +4 proofs that that is untrue.