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Original post by owl While this may be true, it is also true that Open Source projects are mostly driven by very technical people which their primary target isn't to develop a tool for fools or lazy people (to win markets), but to develop a tool where it's needed, where there wasn't one already.

Really? Do you really believe that? Then what's all this "Linux World Domination" I hear about?

I hate to break it to you, but Open Source is not a technical philosophy. It is a social (and some would point out, rather Socialist) doctrine. A society composed strictly of technical alpha types is not sustainable, not in the least because the total absence of people skills (note that you referred to regular, non-technical users as "fools" and "lazy people") will prevent anything actually ever being done.

(Side note: Open Source would not work if contributors were actually in physical proximity with each other. The limitations of current communications technology, specifically e-mail, actually help Open Source by stripping away a lot of the emotional overtones on much communication. Ponder that.)

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More than a matter of complaining it is a matter of getting your hands into the problem, and offering a solution for it. That's what Open Source means.

This is just stupid rhetoric. I know what Open Source means. In fact, I'll state that I understand it better than you do. I'm not "complaining" about it, I'm critiquing it - the difference being that critiquing is an exploration of faults with the objective of eliciting a solution.

As a developer you don't just dive into programming an application without doing some requirements gathering and analysis, some design and determination of process/procedure. Why would you do that with the process flaws of Open Source? Who says that I'm not doing something about it? I just happen to want to collect the opinions of others, because - in the best Open Source tradition - "given enough [educated] eyes, all bugs [- even interface bugs -] are shallow."

Respond. Don't react.

(PS. "I find Blender's interface quite good and practical" means nothing. If the overwhelming majority of people find it unusable, then it is broken. Your personal penchant for complexity and obscurity are defects, not strengths. This is a large part of the problem of Open Source: geeks using themselves as the measuring stick.

I hate to break it to you, but there is nothing normal about someone who considers Emacs or Blender or vi intuitively usable. Those are Mastery Interfaces - like the piano - in that the learning curve is exceedingly steep, but the payoff once it has been ascended is massive. Most people do not have the time to invest in such steep learning curves outside their specialties. Consequently, if you are developing an application/interface to be broadly deployed by non-specialists, avoid Mastery Interfaces.)

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Original post by Mayrel Quote: Original post by owl By the way, I find Blender's interface quite good and more practical than many other commercial products. Sorry, but you need to check yourself into an institution. [wink] I cannot get my head around Blender, I'm far more comfortable with 3D Studio.

heh, I had to try it more than once until I understood how to use it, of course. The real problem with blender is that it is different.

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Original post by Oluseyi Those are Mastery Interfaces - like the piano - in that the learning curve is exceedingly steep, but the payoff once it has been ascended is massive.

You don't need to have a steep learning curve to allow for high payoff. You could, for instance, provide a conventional GUI IDE that would gather statistics about the users actions and would allow a user to enter shortcuts for frequenty used operations. You don't need to throw a million shortcuts at someone right away.

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Original post by Oluseyi stuff

okey, your right, don't get upset. :)

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Original post by Oluseyi (PS. "I find Blender's interface quite good and practical" means nothing. If the overwhelming majority of people find it unusable, then it is broken. Your personal penchant for complexity and obscurity are defects, not strengths. This is a large part of the problem of Open Source: geeks using themselves as the measuring stick.

So, Maya is also broken isn't? Can you tell me that the overwhelming majority finds Maya usable the first time they use it? Why do you keep spitting so many B.S.? :) Are space shuttles usable for the overwhelming majority of people, or even pilots?

They must learn how it works before they can use it! The overwhelming majority of computer users don't even know how to use Powerpoint! :)

I'll refrain from taking this discussion with you any longer, I don't want to force you to close this thread to avoid people reading how I make you look like a dumbass ;)

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Original post by Oluseyi There is a very high level of technical elitism in the Open Source community. There always has been. The predominant attitude is that "if you can't figure this out, well, you're an idiot." Maybe true, but computers should adapt to people, not the other way around.

This is very true with some projets, and very untrue with others, but it is a good point. the whole "computer illiterate" condescension thing is a bad attitude.

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Original post by Mayrel This is a somewhat pointless point. Usability is only one of the aspects of software in which innovation can occur. An innovative new algorithm, protocol or storage technique can greatly improve a software product in terms of stability, memory usage and speed, but have no effect on the usability of the product.

Really? A more stable application isn't more usable? The fact that the user may suffer less data loss/corruption, or less lost productivity thanks to the improvement in corruption is not a usabilty benefit?

A more efficient application, in terms of memory usage, is not a more usable application? Improved performance with given resources, that's not a usability benefit? Maybe the program acts less like a sloth on a depressant, that's not more usable?

In that case, we might as well stop discussing right now. Your notion of usability is dysfunctional.

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Unavoidably, open source is never used by as many people as closed source software. Closed source simply has too much market share. Also unavoidably, the people who use OSS are usually technically competent, whilst people who use CSS are often not technically competent. Therefore, it should not be surprising that OSS tends to be designed for technically competent people, whilst CSS tends to be designed for less technically competent people. OSS works because the users are responsible for the evolution of the product. The target audience are, for the most part, people who already know how to use the product.

So, basically, we have a self-holding vicious cycle of crappy interfaces? Thank you for that illumination! Now I know that there is no hope for the usability of OSS, I can forget about Linux forever!

What a cop-out.

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Quote: Because it isn't a user-driven development process. The direction of Windows has and will frequently change because of perceived shifts in the needs and habits of users. That's plainly ridiculous. Like all OSS, KDE is the ultimate in user-driven development -- because it is the users that develop it. KDE changes far more often than Windows, because it is directly effected by shifts in the needs and habits of users.

The changes are mostly cosmetic.

I've used every major revision of KDE; it's still the same paradigm. Not a single change, not a single questioning of the underlying WIMP approach. Windows has introduced Wizards, task-based interfaces, etc, etc. What has KDE given me? How is KDE 3.x any different, except in aesthetic terms, than KDE 1.x?

Furthermore, are you suggesting that there are no non-developer users of KDE, or that their concerns should be ignored because of their lack of ability to directly influence development direction through code?

That's. Just. Pathetic.

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Quote: Wait, I just remembered the ultimate example. Visual C# 2005 Express Beta collects usage data to help refine the product. This is a developer tool! What do you mean by 'collects usage data'? All KDE programs have a 'bug report' feature. People use this feature not just for reporting traditional crashes or errors in logic, but problems with usability.

Hold it.

What priority is assigned to usability bug reports in KDE? In most OSS projects, usability reports get automatically assigned the lowest possible priority! Look, I'm not here to bash OSS, or even KDE - though I don't care for it much. I'm asking how we can improve the workflow. Your insistence on taking some entrenched position and heading on random tangents per OSS-good-CSS-evil doesn't further the discourse, nor is it profitable.

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Quote: Of course, there are an untold number of additional examples. Widget proliferation... Is this a KDE thing, or are you complaining about the fact that there's about a billion GUI toolkits for X? KDE's widgets are, IMO, just fine. The Billion Toolkit Problem, on the other hand, is a genuine problem.

Actually, by "Widget Proliferation" I meant the fact that Linux applications (and this isn't specific to KDE) typically expose every bit of underlying functionality through independent widgets - more buttons, icons, etc. Take a look at this KBear (FTP client) screenshot, for example. I mean, was that really necessary?

Of course, this isn't a problem exclusive to OSS or Linux. It's exclusive to poor HCI. I found a program call AsfTools for mucking about with Windows Media formats, and that interface is a design from hell! But it's written by one guy and it's free, so I'm loathe to complain. OSS is basically an institution. It needs better habits.

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Quote: ...excessive required reading... I don't know what you mean, there.

Too much text right in the interface. Give a menu item a simple, verb-based label, not an entire sentence. And use common terminology, not "smbUmount share."

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Quote: ...and the conspicuous lack of task-based user interfaces in OSS can be identified in a mind-numbing number of applications. What's a "task-based user interface"?

A task-based UI sets up a number of activities a user typically wants to accomplish (say, the top 5 or 10 use cases) and guides the user essentially on rails through that task. Any Windows application Wizard would be a good example of a task-based UI.

This is in contrast to a command-based UI, where you have to know not only what you want to do but what command initiates that action. Task-based UIs are easier to use because they support exploration/discovery without intimidating the user (when properly deployed). The sheer number of options in a command-based UI and the terseness of the interface (due to space constraints) results in many users exploiting only a fraction of the total application functionality.

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Quote: I'm a big fan of OSS; I'm just disappointed with how unadventurous it's been, by and large. I mean, Linux is a reimplementation of a 40-odd year old operating system. No. Linux is sort of based upon an ancient operating system. It has, as all modern UNIX-alikes have, greatly expanded functionality.

Of course it has expanded functionality, but it still lives by those dated paradigms and principles. Open Source, in my mind, should have, by now, produced at least one working and usable alternative approach to computer software organization. Eliminating the distinction between operating system and application, for example, so functionality is simply added to the environment. That allows users to think in terms of what they want to accomplish, not which program they want to use.

That isn't feasible in CSS as yet because the companies who have invested so much money don't want to lose that brand recognition, etc. Open Source is not fiscally motivated.

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Quote: KDE, GNOME and virtually all other window managers are implementations of a 30-year old interface paradigm. So is Windows. That isn't an OSS problem.

I never said it was. I said, as I expounded above, that I was disappointed that OSS hadn't really tried other alternatives.

Caveat: I know alternatives are out there. It's like a hobby of mine, looking for obscure/fresh application design. I know of the ROX filehandler, for instance, but I also know that it's based on/inspired by the RISC OS.

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Quote: The whole traditional notion of "desktop" and "applications" is not set in stone. No, but it is set in people's minds.

I disagree. I think that the notion of the desktop is a metaphor that people come to grasp, but is explained to them and processed in terms of higher-order, root concepts. Well, can we design an interface based on those root concepts instead?

That is the challenge.

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Quote: Open Source, to me, is a huge opportunity to try real alternatives, really new stuff. I'm not usually one to quote the Good Book, but there is nothing new under the sun.

Cop out.

[Edited by - Oluseyi on August 2, 2004 5:22:59 PM]

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Original post by owl I'll refrain from taking this discussion with you any longer, I don't want to force you to close this thread to avoid people reading how I make you look like a dumbass ;)

I've never closed a thread because I was losing an argument. I'm not about to start now with a functional retard.

If you have a point to make, make it. Put up, or shut up.

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Original post by Oluseyi If you have a point to make, make it. Put up, or shut up.

And I should do that just because you ask me to, isn't? Have fun discussing your thread, alone. ;)

I concur with the feeling that innovation is an area where the Open-Source movement has definitely been lacking. One way in which this could be resolved is by encouraging the open-source development of academic research projects. Researchers in academic institutions are payed bundles of money to progress their field --> to propose innovative architectures, design and prototype systems, and they are almost always on the bleeding edge of technology. Commercial companies realize this, which is why commercial research sponsorship keeps going up --> and the commercial giants have generally been pretty good about willing to experiment and keep up with new research ideas, which in turn has meant that its always those companies that are responsible for the majority of computer innovation.

The singular focus of open-source software as an alternative to pre-existing commercial software seems to suggest that open-source developers are on a belief-inspired 'jihad' against the commercial software sector, rather than a movement that seeks to foster innovation and progress the field of computing. Im all for Open Source - I was running an open-source project until recently (before i got a job in research), but the movement needs to re-think its philosophy.

The goal of open source movement cannot be to annihilate the commercial software giants. It needs to shift its focus to innovation and progress.

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Original post by psamty10 I concur with the feeling that innovation is an area where the Open-Source movement has definitely been lacking.

In which area exactly? Take a look at this list or this other. You may be surprised about how many innovative projects you may find there.

Just because they don't advertise it doesn't mean they doesn't exist.