On 10-09-12 05:04 PM, figureloop wrote:
On Sep 12, 4:42 am, Joe Croft<[email protected]> wrote:
Alas, yet another person who misunderstands open source and it's authors.
Doesn't sound like any misunderstanding. My perspective is that most
open source is written by developers for developers. There is nothing
wrong with that. The resulting user interfaces are "developer-
centric" meaning that the interaction paradigms are typical of how
software developers operate, ie, command line interfaces, makefiles,
config. files/scripts, compilers, etc.
That was the case many years ago, but gradually things have come over to
having good GUI interfaces on many Open Source software programs. There
is still a bit of "everything including the Kitchen sink" in many
interfaces, and often an application will be happy to open several
windows to do its thing.
GIMP is a good example of an application with a half dozen windows,
DigiKam gets by with just 2 or 3.
NOW what you may find is that the architecture is based on the Unix
paradigm, where the GUI actually calls applications in the background
for you, k3b the most startlingly named CD recoding utility is like
that. You go through the whole process with the GUI and then it asks if
you want to save the debugging information and if you do it shows you
the Cammand line work it actually did to record your CD or DVD.
After
all as you stated, open-source developers have usually written their
software to serve a need, usually that being a need of the developer,
and to solve it in a manner that the developer chooses for their
preference. Hence, since the software was not written to serve the
needs of "users" it shouldn't be expected that users will generally
perceive open-source as "better."
Again, in many cases the developers ARE paid and do usability research
just like the Commercial Guys. I know a couple of local Consultants
actually make there living by making improvments that customers want on
existing products.
That is why I have no problem paying for good software, and actually
want to see developers of software aimed at general users to be able
to make a decent buck doing so.
Even better is paying for good free software!
But copyright I am not so sure about. I think it is just a form of
contract, which I support as a critical element of a liberty based
society.
Yes, the only major problem with Copyright is the Micky Mouse problem.
50 or 70 years is way too long! The Includion of TPM is related to
this, as the long terms create a sense of intitlement in the rights
holder who are seldom the actual creators.
I will also stop here. other than to say that the last commercial
software I used was the junk at work. I have been retired nearly two
yaers now and have been using Kubuntu all the way. gEDA is still in the
"needs work" category base don what I have seen.
--
Charles MacDonald Stittsville Ontario
[email protected] Just Beyond the Fringe
http://www.TelecomOttawa.net/~cmacd/
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