On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Linux Lingam <[email protected]> wrote: > > in fact, foss hasn't yet won the expected and widespread adoption i > had hoped in the no-brainer category from the previous decade: > openoffice.org vs msoffice. Plus, even after President Abdul Kalam's
I guess we miss the bus everytime when it comes to adoption of FOSS. Firstly, whatever hope/estimations/imaginations one has for FOSS adoption will always be shattered. Reason, FOSS adoption like FOSS development happens in real time not in internet time. Expecting a revolution is futile, instead FOSS adoption is fueled by rebels. The only way to increase FOSS adoption is to improve the FOSS software. We should not be happy, when a FOSS software is create which has almost same features of a closed solution, with same amount of complexity or even more in few cases. To achieve greater adoption, we need more investment in development of FOSS software. We have seen examples like MySQL, Firefox, Google Chrome and many others, that when a FOSS?Open source software lowers the complexity and learning curve, adoption happens on its own (with some marketing). We need to invest time and money into building next generation of FOSS software, which will aim at cutting the learning curve as well as pushing new ideas. Please do not expect any developer to have an itch to develop such software. Developers will only start having such itch after seeing something working. As a community we need to sit down and look at the problems faced and find workarounds. At the same time I am not promoting just user interface or creating magic or any other kind of crap. I am advocating, rethinking of the whole workflow for the FOSS software to make FOSS user more efficient. Technologically, FOSS has already proven to far superior to any closed system, the user interfaces for free software are as almost as good as closed systems and as complex as closed solutions. This translates into spending equal amount to learn a new thing (FOSS), as it took for closed one. Which makes many potential user, un-interested in FOSS. So think how can we cut the learning time and allow user to do more with FOSS than she can achieve with closed system :) regards Vivek -- The hidden harmony is better than the obvious!! _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
