On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote:
> > I can't speak for Rich, but it was not my intent to leave an impression of > "mass exodus". Just my pulling back from the potential promise I saw that > open source has, but IMO is not doing a good job of meeting. I think > Canonical is making that effort, but I have no feel as to their success. > Someday, when I'm rich but not famous, and have the time, I really want to > try Linux. Personally, I don't care for the direction MS and Apple are > going with the operating systems. AKA, I'm not a cloud fan and a devotee > of the cloud idea for personal use. > > I see an opportunity for open source to be a real contender/option to be > an alternative to MS and Apple for the users. I think this should be > obvious with the success of the Android/Linux based phones. I am a fan of > competition, of which there is little today. But I think the attitudes of > many in the open source community may be undermining that opportunity. > > The words I wrote that started this thread were a little harsh, but I was frustrated. My experience with LyX has been excellent - it's gotten out of my way and allowed me to concentrate on the content and structure of my documents, just what it was designed to do. In other circumstances, with no time deadline, I would not have minded working on the problem. But I was writing from the point of view of the majority of users to whom computers are not intrinsically interesting, but just tools to get some work done. The response to this is often an exhortation to them to learn about their computers, an attitude that there's something lacking in those who don't. But I've known any number of intelligent doctors and lawyers and teachers whose cognitive loads are already high enough that telling them that they need to gain an intimate of knowledge of computers is just a bar too high. They want their computers to just work, the way the other appliances in their lives do. Apple seems to understand this better than the rest of the industry; it's striking to watch toddlers pick up iPads and just get to it. (Noting that Apple OSes are based on FOSS and they contribute in important ways to the community; who would have guessed 25 years ago that Apple would achieve the apparently impossible - a Unix-style operating system usable by the average person?) That said, there are two attitudes common in the open source community that are orthogonal. The first is that free (in Stallman's senses) and open software is just better, intrinsically, philosophically and politically. It should take over the world. The bazaar is better than the cathedral. But when people complain about how impenetrable, geeky and poorly documented much of FOSS is, it's often thrown back in their faces (we're all volunteers, we scratch our own itches, learn about your computer, learn to code and contribute). FOSS is wonderful, at times. FOSS is terrible, at times (sometimes the same time it's wonderful). Proprietary software is wonderful, at times. It's terrible, at times (sometimes the same time it's wonderful). A lot of human technology is old (controlled fire goes back before H. sapiens!) and we've learned lots of ways to control and cope. Digital computer technology is less than a century old and we're still in the early learning phase of controlling and coping with it. I divide software organizations, not into FOSS vs. proprietary, but into apathetic or hostile to criticism vs. receptive and listening. This list provides a lot of patient handholding that is atypical (perhaps that has something to do with the fact that it's a community of people who write, for whatever purpose). I appreciate it very much. -- Rich
