Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on July 15, 2003 09:43 PM
There is an overall lack of respect for the final user in the Open Source world. This is probably the worst problem, because 1) reduces adoption of OSS to an act of faith. 2) it leads to duplication of efforts, and to redundant and competing Open Source projects.
Have you not already seen the following scenario? Program A is an Open Source program that might be useful to you: you download it, you install it, you find out it doesn't work off the shelf, you investigate a bit, you subscribe a mailing list, then, rightly or not, you come to the conclusion that simply it is not good enough. Then, a) if you are an end user: you pay for a commercial product and never go back to Open Source, or b) if you are a programmer you start fiddling with the idea that you might write program B which is much much better ( of course you don't even figure out how to communicate your ideas to end user: it is not your job, because you are a god of programming, you can leave the documentation to some less gifted volounteer ). I think documentation and ease of use is the only key to success. SOFTWARE MUST WORK!!! stick that in your shiny brains.
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Same old story
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on July 15, 2003 09:43 PM1) reduces adoption of OSS to an act of faith.
2) it leads to duplication of efforts, and to redundant and competing Open Source projects.
Have you not already seen the following scenario?
Program A is an Open Source program that might be useful to you: you download it, you install it, you find out it doesn't work off the shelf, you investigate a bit, you subscribe a mailing list, then, rightly or not, you come to the conclusion that simply it is not good enough.
Then, a) if you are an end user: you pay for a commercial product and never go back to Open Source, or b) if you are a programmer you start fiddling with the idea that you might write program B which is much much better ( of course you don't even figure out how to communicate your ideas to end user: it is not your job, because you are a god of programming, you can leave the documentation to some less gifted volounteer ). I think documentation and ease of use is the only key to success. SOFTWARE MUST WORK!!! stick that in your shiny brains.
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