ChrisOwens;451426 Wrote: > > It seems sometimes like there's a clear trade-off between > closed-source, reliable, limited, friendly products and those that are > open-source, unreliable, hacker-friendly, but user-hostile. > It's all about who decides what to do and how to do it.
In many open source projects, the decisions are made by one or several developers which wants the software to be usable in all possible scenarios. It's more important to make it work for everyone than to make it work really good for a smaller part of the crowd. Features that are cool or interesting to implement often get higher priority than features that improve the usability. Advanced users get exited when they realize all possibilities and the developers get excited when they realize someone likes it and implement more advanced stuff. Look at my plugins for a great example on this, very flexible but many users don't even bother to try because they are too complex to configure. However, IMHO SqueezeCenter isn't the typical open source project. There is a huge difference when a company makes all decisions and the decisions are based on what reaches the company strategy and gives economical results in the end. In my opinion, Logitech has to improve on deciding on a strategy and making decisions based on that strategy. This has nothing to do with if the software is released as open source or closed source. However, as long as the strategy only is available internally, there is a huge risk the community will do its best to try to force you another way because they don't know why you take certain decisions. I'm not saying that making the strategy public would make the community follow it without complaints, but it would probably explain some things and make it easier to understand some decisions. Of course, sometimes it really feels like there isn't a strategy available even internally, but that's probably just because you implement it in smaller steps so we don't see the forest for all the trees. Yes, I also do understand that it might be a bad idea to make the strategy public since it will also make it available for all competitors. ChrisOwens;451426 Wrote: > > However, I think there are good paths down the middle as well. Apple > does have success with the first course, but it's far from crystal clear > to me that their success is DUE to those four things alone. We have to > develop our own synthesis (or gestalt!) for why our products are better, > and I think help from the community and an open source server can > continue to be part of that. > I agree. I'm pretty sure Apple's success is because they work a lot with usability. Limiting features is part of this but usability involves a lot more things than just limiting the number of available features. Usability isn't easy and you won't success unless you have someone that works with it. As mentioned earlier in another context in this thread, user interface design is one part of the formula but there is a lot of other stuff involved too. Apple has a clear strategy that's visible in all their products, it starts with physical design but you will also see it when using the products. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can say the same for the Squeezebox products yet but I hope we will get there. I think anyone blaming the community or the open source philosophy for your problem is on the wrong road even though it probably sometimes feels like an easy way out. I'm pretty sure you would have exactly the same problems plus a number of new ones if you decided to go closed source and ignore the community. A problem with the community which you probably already know is that most persons in the forum might be the target user of the old products but they might not be the typical user you are targeting today and in the future, especially if you are moving in the Joe Sixpack direction. Some examples of this are some poll threads that showed that Linux was the most used operating system for SqueezeCenter and that Google Chrome Beta is used by a large percentage. I'm pretty sure Windows and IE/Firefox is what your typical user use. However, I think you have to learn to not listen to the community in all situations. Of course, this isn't easy because to make the community stay they also need to feel that you listen to them. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info) (Install my plugins through Extension Downloader) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library, Title Switcher and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.isaksson.info/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=66745 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
