Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
David, my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. My concern is that because the process does not include users, it is difficult for their needs to be met. regards Jonathan Chetwynd Accessibility Consultant on Media Literacy and the Internet in many cases developers: have little or no understanding of a 'public' audience. actively refrain from user testing. These two points can be summarised as open-source developers don't care about usability. And this demonstrably isn't true. Different tools are designed for different audiences; emacs, for example, is intended to be usable by developers - and it is. Similarly, Ubuntu, GNOME and other systems that _are_ intended for regular end-users have clearly seen a great deal of usability testing. encourage feature creep Do you have any evidence that you can port to to demonstrate this? design to impress their peers You say this as if this is a bad thing! in some sense consumerism at least gives the end user some authority. To a degree, but it heavily depends on there being a free market with a number of competing alternatives. I'm not an economist, but it appears that, in computing, free markets generally cannot form if the interfaces used for data interchange are closed and/or proprietary; in such markets, one provider will eventually tend to dominate all of the others. For example: Operating systems: MS Windows tends to dominate (because nothing else can run Windows applications, as the ABIs/APIs are myriad and not fully documented); Office productivity suites: MS Office tends to dominate (because nothing else can read/write the proprietary file formats that Office uses.) To contrast: Web browsers: There are many web-browsers: Seamonkey, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx etc. (because the interfaces that such applications must support are well-documented.) Web servers: lighttpd, Apache, Nginx, IIS etc. (because the interfaces that such servers must support are well-documented.) .. and so forth. If there is a free market, then the consumer has influence. Note that in the case of the BBC iPlayer and other similar services from other broadcasters, the interfaces are not fully documented - and this is considered a feature! as you may know, the web specifications created by W3C are far more potent than the mere iplayer. I don't think I understand - how (and why?) are you comparing the W3C interface specifications and guidelines, which exist to ensure interoperability between different implementations, and the BBC's iPlayer, which is just one application? The issues are similar though there are more companies and corporations engaged in the project Than which project? The W3C? There have certainly been many more companies and corporations involved in the W3C specification development process than that of the iPlayer! Cheers, David -- David McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Computing, Imperial College, London - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 08:34:05AM +0100, ~:'' wrote: David, my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... You seem very confused. Easy to use and aimed at unsophisticated end-users are not synonyms. As far as easy to use I would include many open-source tools - from programming libraries, to languages, to tools, to editors, to operating systems. They meet the needs of their intended users and are no more difficult to use than their commercial counterparts where they exist. Admittedly some of them build on a different paradigm to that which some users who have grown up on Windows are used to but that is yet another issue. As for end-user tools we have Firefox and OpenOffice leading the way. Many people blog on an open-source blogging engine. I know many people from a non-technical background who use Audacity and Scribus. Of course none of these has the market share of the major player that has been established for 15 years or so. However they do have significant market share in their application space which indicates that ease-of-use to end-users isn't that much of an issue. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
~:'' wrote: David, my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. Jonathon are you just trolling or are you serious? Apache? Linux? Ant? OpenOffice? Mozilla/Firefox? These OS applications are popular *because* of their user interfaces (although for some the UI is an API or config file). David - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
~:'' ありがとうございました。 wrote: where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... By 'mainstream', do you mean 'commonplace among computer users' or 'commonplace among the general public'? Also, are you conceding that Ubuntu and Gnome are easy to use? the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. I'm confused about what you mean by 'open source project', since you cite Wikipedia as one and imply that Ubuntu Linux is another. Are we talking about software, or data, or services, or platforms, or what? If Wikipedia is an example, then I think a reasonable case can be made that the Internet is the world's biggest open source project, and it's pretty mainstream. Plus, web browsers are pretty easy to use, especially the open source ones. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. If Wikipedia doesn't count as a tool, how do you define 'tool'? How about Google? It's not directly open-source, but it's built on top of Linux, which is. Does such an enabling technology that's in widespread use behind the scenes not count as 'popular' or 'mainstream' when it's the bedrock of things that are? My concern is that because the process does not include users, it is difficult for their needs to be met. Which 'process' are you talking about? Are you suggesting that software is too important to be left to programmers? -- Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
For a given value of popular of course. There are many open source projects which are extremely popular in their own contexts. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 8:34 AM To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium David, my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. My concern is that because the process does not include users, it is difficult for their needs to be met. regards Jonathan Chetwynd Accessibility Consultant on Media Literacy and the Internet in many cases developers: have little or no understanding of a 'public' audience. actively refrain from user testing. These two points can be summarised as open-source developers don't care about usability. And this demonstrably isn't true. Different tools are designed for different audiences; emacs, for example, is intended to be usable by developers - and it is. Similarly, Ubuntu, GNOME and other systems that _are_ intended for regular end-users have clearly seen a great deal of usability testing. encourage feature creep Do you have any evidence that you can port to to demonstrate this? design to impress their peers You say this as if this is a bad thing! in some sense consumerism at least gives the end user some authority. To a degree, but it heavily depends on there being a free market with a number of competing alternatives. I'm not an economist, but it appears that, in computing, free markets generally cannot form if the interfaces used for data interchange are closed and/or proprietary; in such markets, one provider will eventually tend to dominate all of the others. For example: Operating systems: MS Windows tends to dominate (because nothing else can run Windows applications, as the ABIs/APIs are myriad and not fully documented); Office productivity suites: MS Office tends to dominate (because nothing else can read/write the proprietary file formats that Office uses.) To contrast: Web browsers: There are many web-browsers: Seamonkey, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx etc. (because the interfaces that such applications must support are well-documented.) Web servers: lighttpd, Apache, Nginx, IIS etc. (because the interfaces that such servers must support are well-documented.) .. and so forth. If there is a free market, then the consumer has influence. Note that in the case of the BBC iPlayer and other similar services from other broadcasters, the interfaces are not fully documented - and this is considered a feature! as you may know, the web specifications created by W3C are far more potent than the mere iplayer. I don't think I understand - how (and why?) are you comparing the W3C interface specifications and guidelines, which exist to ensure interoperability between different implementations, and the BBC's iPlayer, which is just one application? The issues are similar though there are more companies and corporations engaged in the project Than which project? The W3C? There have certainly been many more companies and corporations involved in the W3C specification development process than that of the iPlayer! Cheers, David -- David McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Computing, Imperial College, London - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ * To view the terms under which this email is distributed, please go to http://www.hull.ac.uk/legal/email_disclaimer.html *
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
~:'' wrote: where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. First, there are thousands of open source projects that are popular. Here are a few that i use: * Apache web server. Runs the majority of web site. * MySQL - Database * PHP - Web site scripting language * Firefox Thunderbird * VLC Media Player - Media player * Filezilla - FTP program * Many mail servers are opensource, ie Postfix, Sendmail * ClamAV - Free antivirus scanner * Spamassassin - Spam filter used by many ISPs * Gimp - Popular image editor * Open Office * Debian Ubuntu Linux * SugarCRM - Customer Relationship Management * Wordpress - Blogging * MediaWiki - The application behind wikipedia * Horde - Webmail application Currently the majority of open source software is mainly used by technical users, however with Ubuntu maturing into a great operating system this is likely to change with people becoming frustrated with the Microsoft experience and looking for an alternative. My concern is that because the process does not include users, it is difficult for their needs to be met. You can always be involved in the development process of any of these programs. They are always looking for testers and if you get involved on the suitable mailing list most developers are open to suggestions for improvements. I would argue that open source software easily meets users needs, sometimes better then equivalent commercial software. This is because open source software doesn't have to follow the demands of a company and are usual started as there is no other software then meets the needs of the developers. Regards Adam - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
On 25/10/2007, ~:'' ありがとうございました。 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David, the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. That would explain the unpopularity of a LAMP development envionment then /sarcasm Aside from Linux Apache MySQL PHP I can think of Firefox (over 20% of market share IIRC) Wordpress (and other blogging software) PHPbb (most online forums I've seen use this) Media Wiki (it's not just for Wikipedia) and possibly Open Office (I like it, but am not sure about it's popularity) That's just in the last 20 seconds, I'm sure people can come up with others.
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
On Thursday 25 October 2007 08:34, ~:'' ありがとうございました。 wrote: the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. I'd hardly say that the internet, email, web, DNS etc are hardly not mainstream and not popular. It's next to impossible to use the internet and NOT use open source. Sendmail (email) is older either of the terms of free software or open source, and has always been open source (was termed common sense back then). The BSD TCP/IP stack likewise has been around for a very long time and a core part of Windows for a long time. Mac OS X is underpinned by open source, and if you removed the open source elements you'd be left with a pretty shell. Sendmail, along with the original TCP/IP stack set the tone for a long time. The term free software was actually much later to the party (which started sooner) than people generally realise. (Not to do it down, but pointing out that this all started from pragmatics not politics) The Net Gear routers given away for free by Sky AOL (among others) are all linux based (meaning a very large chunk of the UK actually has linux in their home and doesn't realise it). The web itself is largely powered by open source webservers with apache the most notable, but a significantly chunk of the tail after that is also open source. This mailing list you are using to talk to people with is Majordomo which is open source, which is written in perl, which is also open source. Facebook, which has more people on its systems than live in many countries (it's into the top 40 last time I looked), is an application that again depends upon open source in many different layers. (There's more people in the UK on facebook than live in Ireland) Is facebook itself open source? No. Could it exist without open source? Doubtful. However open source becomes the commons upon which the next layer of proprietary apps get written: (cf google docs, yahoo maps, facebook, etc). To suggest that Wikipedia is the only popular open source project misses just how widespread and widely used open source is, because you're missing the fact that without open source, we simply would not have the world we live in today. I'd also contest whether Linux friends aren't mainstream when I see in WH Smiths *Computer Active* doing a Linux special. (I'd expect a number of other magazines to do that, but not Computer Active.) This is aside from things like the OLPC project distributing soon millions of laptops (entirely OSS based) to developing countries[1] and companies like Asus developing systems like the EEE PC which will be distributed in the UK by RM Machines (to schools (probably paid for by tesco...) ) among others which boasts it's Linux based. (and looks pretty cool) [1] What's the PC term for this these days? :-) I could go on, but at the end of the day, a large amount of infrastructure these days that people use (be it in Flickr, google, Mac OS X, etc) is based in open source. Remove it, and you're left largely with templates, data without databases, pretty skins and logic which doesn't control. Also, Firefox is significantly more popular with the average user than you might expect. But all that said, your mail client adds the following header: * Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) So it looks like you're using the Free BSD derivative Mac OS X. Probably the most popular incarnation of FreeBSD - with the open source base here: * http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html But then, Macs aren't popular are they ? ;-) Ever-so-slightly-teasingly-devils-advocately-ly, :-) Michael. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
