Hi Jeremy,
some random thoughts:
I know nobody wants to hear my opinions, and in traditional fashion,
divergent ideas will likely be squashed, but I'll spit them out
anyway.
If you start out with this ass-umption, why are you still confused about
the reasons for the responses that you get?
Coming from the background of proprietary commercial software
development, I've consantly 'butted heads' with the prevailing
attitudes of the Open Source Community at large. Not all members share
the attitudes I speak of, but it seems the majority surely do, and
OpenWrt and FreeWrt definitely do.
I had hoped FreeWrt would have a different direction than OpenWrt, as
its mission statement claimed. Sadly, it seems this is not the case.
Can't say that I agree with the reasons to fork from OpenWrt, but that
is not the issue here, so I won't go into detail on that.
My biggest issue is that you are developing for yourselves, intead of
for the public. That's fine and dandy, but selfish. Why would you be
so stubborn as to not allow your code to be used easly by the
mainstream? Is this some built up hatred of the mainstream or what?
There are enough projects that target the 'mainstream' users that can't
do without a web interface - why do we have to compete with them? Just
because we could? No, we're not developing the things 'just for
ourselves', but rather for ourselves and for technical people that can
build on our code.
User interface design is secondary and the lead developer of FreeWrt,
wbx, even said 'I don't care about a UI, but if someone wants to
maintain it, that's ok'. Yea, I'm sure lots of people will jump into a
task when this is the opinion of the lead develeper.
Sure, this would be inappropriate if we intended to compete with the
other firmware projects that target the mainstream users.
But we don't, so it's absolutely OK.
Even for those very famaliar with the console, it's quicker and easier
to use a web UI. Sure, you can do oddball things not possible with a
web UI, but a web UI is *appropriate* and *easy to use*. Join the
1990s guys (yes, I know it's 2006). Why anyone would deny this fact, I
don't know.... I can't figure out why there is such resistance. This
attitude of anything making life easier for the mainstream is 'lame'
is what has held your community back for so long, and continues to
hold it back.
Here's a very good reason: Making the Web UI an important task instead
of a 'second class citizen' would make it *less* usable for technical
people and here's why: If we spend too much time on a web ui for the
masses this means we have less time for focusing on the things that are
important for people that build on our code - the build system, the
stability of the packages, etc.
Why sacrifice usability for technical people because of the arbitrary
notion that we somehow have to make things right for the mainstream users?
I Google'd just now for 'problems with open source' and the first
result was a well written article that put into words these problems
better than I could have ever done. It's written by an open source
supporter and is intended to fix these issues (I'm sure he was flamed
for daring this):
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_4/levesque/
If we were to suddenly start focusing on the mainstream users - who
would take care of the needs of our main target audiences?
Yes, I know you have your opinions and will never accept any of this.
It's a weird form of self-delusionment is all I can figure.
You know, that's a really stupid attitude to go into a discussion with.
You don't consider the slightest possibility that you might be wrong,
instead you think that you know the so-called 'reality' better than
anybody else and distort everything that other people say in a way that
makes it fit into your map of the world.
If you really believe that you make no difference then why bother?
Now I see on this same day I made my objections to your attitudes you
add a webif developer to the team. Whopee. Is this spite or what? I
hope he knows your attitudes towards webif, since you 'don't care'
about it, and likely consider it highly 'lame'.
Haha... good one. How exactly is accepting a developer for webif
incompatible with 'I don't care about a UI, but if someone wants to
maintain it, that's ok'?
By the way - if you see 'rain' on a weather forecast and then pray for
some rain to come, would you afterwards believe that you have 'caused'
the rain to appear?
Why did I ask that? Oh... no reason, never mind... :-)
I was excited to work on these projects, even though I received a less
than friendly welcoming (at OpenWrt, i.e., every proposition resulting
in beratement). Now I guess I'll move on to things I enjoy.. things
that have a use for even these 'mainstream lamers'.
So now I'm sure I'm on the OSS hitlist for having a divergent opinion.
What a progressive community.
Yeah, right. Everybody's out to get you now. We don't tolerate different
opinions. We're driven by hate of people that don't accept our
selfishness...
Sorry, but please grow up! The world is not as black-and-white as you
make it look.
Cheers,
Felix
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