Here.

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With such a shallow bench and a fundamental misunderstanding of these disciplines, the OSS community has been forced to spend much of its time copying existing applications. In this way they take advantage of usability and design work done by others, but such a strategy necessarily trails behind the products being copied.

Perhaps one of the most cogent explanations of why Open Source applications, while very "cool", embody very little real innovation. Your thoughts/comments/insights? References The article linked to is a reaction/commentary on Open source usability is a technical problem we can solve on our own by Frans English.

Very true. I've always found one of the most glaring problems in most OSS, outside of poor manuals/installers/version compatiblity, is how often you see a good idea from another piece of software (normally commercial and created by doing actual research with test subjects) implimented in a way that entirely defeats the purpose of the feature in the first place. It's a completely blind copy without regard for *why* the feature was there or how it *should* work (sort of like those pacific island people [IIRC] who built runsways and radio towers from sticks and leaves after seeing the American military)

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Original post by Oluseyi Here. Quote: With such a shallow bench and a fundamental misunderstanding of these disciplines, the OSS community has been forced to spend much of its time copying existing applications. In this way they take advantage of usability and design work done by others, but such a strategy necessarily trails behind the products being copied. Perhaps one of the most cogent explanations of why Open Source applications, while very "cool", embody very little real innovation.

It is no such thing. The article is clearly only talking about usability. The usability of open source undeniably trails behind closed source, this is true. But one cannot use an article about usability to make assertions about innovation in general.

It is also unavoidably the case that innovations in usability do not come thick and fast in software intended for a wide audience. Whenever the interface to a program changes, people need to relearn how to use it. Even if the new interface is more usable, the users will still have grown used to the old interface.

There is also the issue of the us and them mentality, exemplified by the article and your response to it. The implication is that there is open source, which is all unusable, and closed source, which is all usable. Obviously that's not the case, there is much closed source software that is very badly designed.

To conclude that open source is inferior because it trails behind high-quality closed source is to willfully ignore the fact that low-quality closed source trails behind high-quality open source.

What makes a program usable or technologically innovative is not the terms under which its source is available, but the conditions under which it is developed. That is what this article cogently explains -- the OSS community does not foster an environment in which usability is considered as important as it should be.

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Original post by Michalson Very true. I've always found one of the most glaring problems in most OSS, outside of poor manuals/installers/version compatiblity,

Documentation and installation are a real issue, yes. Because documentation is just another usability product, the causes of difficult to understand and/or incomplete documentation are generally the same as the causes of difficult to use software -- the software is not designed for people who don't already know how to use the software. The installation problem is caused by the lack of a unified installation mechanism for the many operating systems upon which a open source program might run. In theory, Windows programs don't have this problem.

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is how often you see a good idea from another piece of software (normally commercial and created by doing actual research with test subjects)

Before a 'stable release', open source software is usually tested on many more people than closed source software. The problem is not that open source is not tested, the problem is that the audience is usually technically competent, and things that are difficult for the IT illiterate to understand might not get caught.

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implemented in a way that entirely defeats the purpose of the feature in the first place.

Can you give an example of a borrowed feature in an OSS program which entirely defeats the purpose of the feature? I can think of a few features that look to be incomplete copies of features from closed source software, but none that were so bad they entirely defeated the purpose of the feature.

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It's a completely blind copy without regard for *why* the feature was there or how it *should* work (sort of like those pacific island people [IIRC] who built runsways and radio towers from sticks and leaves after seeing the American military)

Cargo cult interface design, eh?

I agree with Mayrel, this article hass nothing to do with innovation, I don't even know why the author put that in the article. Otherwise, it's a very constructive article.

I think the authors of both articles have some good points.

This is more or less what I've been saying for several months now. If you look at almost any OSS software (with the exception of a handful of majro projects), they have severe usability problems...and it seems that nobody who understands HCI goes into OSS. You'll find that the most effective OSS interfaces are, in fact, clones of existing commercial software.

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Original post by Mayrel Before a 'stable release', open source software is usually tested on many more people than closed source software. The problem is not that open source is not tested, the problem is that the audience is usually technically competent, and things that are difficult for the IT illiterate to understand might not get caught.

I wasn't talking about bugs at all, my point apparently went right over you.

I was reading some of the comments and one came up about how it's all the fault of the OSS development model, where people aren't forced to do something a certain way.

That's true, but that doesn't mean there isn't leadership, and the leadership is perfectly capable of ensuring that usability requirements are met.

GNOME is currently trying to do this. They may be relying a bit much on opinioned principles, but they're taking steps in the right direction: They're taking features and making the calls about what gets put into the user's face, and what doesn't need to.

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Original post by Michalson Quote: Original post by Mayrel Before a 'stable release', open source software is usually tested on many more people than closed source software. The problem is not that open source is not tested, the problem is that the audience is usually technically competent, and things that are difficult for the IT illiterate to understand might not get caught. I wasn't talking about bugs at all, my point apparently went right over you.

He's not talking about bugs either, he's just pointing that the user interface testing isn't done on nontechnical people, because it's difficult for nontechnical people to try the beta.

Thus, software with a confusing interface is released as stable because everybody who has tested it so far has been a person that probably understands everythign that's going on behind the scenes. (and, for instance, thinks "smbumount" is a perfectly sensible name for an option in a menu)

Most OSS software I've tried has been just as easy to use as their closed source counterparts. The only thin thats sometimes makes OSS more complicated is the variety of options.

I've seen just as much innovation in OSS as I have in closed source lately, which has only been slow incrimental improvements anyway.

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Original post by Michalson Quote: Original post by Mayrel Before a 'stable release', open source software is usually tested on many more people than closed source software. The problem is not that open source is not tested, the problem is that the audience is usually technically competent, and things that are difficult for the IT illiterate to understand might not get caught. I wasn't talking about bugs at all, my point apparently went right over you.

That wont work Mich. We know you're an intelligent person.