On Mon, Dec 06, 1999 at 01:56:31AM -0500, Caspian wrote: > I'd just like to add my two cents (they're rather big...perhaps > they're two dollars?) to this little discussion.
> [342 line rant deleted] i think you exaggerate just a little :) some points that need to be made in response (in random order, as i thought of them): 1a. free software survived - flourished, even - long before your Joe WinIdiot even noticed that it existed. there is no reason at all that it will not continue to do so. 1b. Joe WinIdiot is irrelevant to the success of free software because Joe Winidiot will *never* contribute a single line of code to any free software project. success for free software depends on developers, not users. 1c. free software is getting better every day. more programs, better programs. things that nobody would have even considered doing as a free software project a few years ago are now being done. we've got the operating system, and the tools...now the apps. 1d. critical mass. see points 1a and 1c. there's no way of stopping the chain reaction now. 2. you are confusing "pretty and easy to learn" with "easy to use". i've ranted about this before, so i'll spare you now. suffice it to say that you shouldn't believe what marketing types want you to believe. 3. we *are* doing this for ourselves. if others benefit too, that's great, but not essential. IMO the heart and soul goes out of free software if your primary motivation is to scratch someone else's itch rather than your own. 4. the ratio of free software developers to free software users may be shrinking, but the total number is increasing. in more concrete (but only example) figures: 5% of 100,000 is a whole lot less than 2% of 1,000,000. 5. who gives a damn if redhat, or corel, or whoever makes money from free software? money's not the issue. as long as the software remains free, it doesn't matter what they do. even better, some of them even contribute a lot of free software back to the community (RH may have their faults, but they *have* contributed a lot of software, and they have paid for a lot of programming hours on free software projects...overall, they have been a force for good in the free software world - although this will undoubtedly change within 3-5 years as they turn into just another amoral corporation) 6. there are sometimes extreme contradictions between what clueful geeks want from a system and what your Joe Winidiot might want from a system. these contradictions are often mutually exclusive. simplicity (aka "easy to learn") is most often achieved by sacrificing flexibility and power (aka "easy to use"). just slapping on a GUI will not and can not solve this inherent conflict. A GUI is NOT a magic wand. software is NOT "one size fits all". that's one of the reasons why free software is essential. if it doesn't suit you, hack it until it does. 7. error messages are primarily for the programmer, not the user. their main purpose is to provide enough diagnostic information so the programmer can figure out what/where the bug is. 8. we *have* good GUIs. the fact that they may not be the same kind of GUI that your Joe Winidiot might choose to use is irrelevant. our needs are different to Mr JW. Hell, our needs are different from each others which is why we have dozens of window managers and several GUIs to choose from. 9. we don't need visual C++ or anything like it. we really don't want the illiterate barbarian hordes of windows programmers filling the free software archives with incomprehensible cargo-cult programming crap. if someone can't program without such tools then they have no business calling themselves a programmer and they should start studying for a more appropriate career (practicing "would you like fries with that, sir?" would be about right) 10. build a system so simple that even a moron can use it and only a moron will want to use it. cf. Microsoft Windows. 11. i'm frankly sick of the whole damn world focusing on the lowest fucking common denominator! why not expend some energy on smart people for a change? that's why i'm in debian, that's why i'm involved in free software - because it's mostly smart people doing clever things for our own benefit. i don't write or contribute to free software because i want to make yet another meaningless toy for the morons in consumerland to waste their lives with. i do it because it solves some problem for myself and also so that i can share my ideas and code with my peers - hopefully they can learn from and be impressed or amused by what i do, just as i can learn from and be impressed or amused by what they do. i.e. it's about community, not product. participation, not consumption. 12. there's no way that you can simplify complex tools for Joe Winidiot without losing the value of those tools. complex tools require knowledge, and they require intelligence to operate. e.g. you need to know certain things, like "what is a string?" or "what does case sensitivity mean?" in order to get any use out of tools like grep. this means that documentation is key, not simplication. help to educate those who can be educated and to hell with the rest. they aren't worth wasting time on, let them eat microsoft. 13. yes, i am an arrogant elitist bastard. i don't care. 14. the Joe Winidiots of this world may not be capable of installing or running Linux by themselves, but they aren't capable of installing or running Windows or MS Word either. this is why most companies spend a fortune on technical support staff, help-desks, and support contracts. 15. most of those support staff are barely more computer-literate than the people they are helping...but it's damn easy to sound like an "expert" when your boss isn't capable of understanding what you're talking about either. 16. if you see a need then start coding. don't waste everyone's time by telling us what we *should* be doing. craig -- craig sanders
