4 ms·

But will they ever learn? Apparently convenience wins out over common sense every sodding time.

southerntofu 7y ago
Well maybe we free-software people need to think a little more in terms of convenience for newcomers and inexperienced users? That doesn't mean we can't have the scripting/theming system power users just love. But maybe we can provide usable defaults and a nice UI? (When i say a nice UI i don't mean necessarily a GUI with blinks and flashes everywhere. some CLI tools have a good UI, some don't. See for example https://github.com/chmln/sd https://github.com/chmln/sd )
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  This is not about GUIs, and bringing a trivial sed replacement into it is an utterly irrelevance.
  - southerntofu 7y ago
    Well, i think what you called convenience is mostly a UI question in the view of end-users, which is why i brought it to the table although the initial debate was whether we could trust proprietary software at all. Sorry if you thought that was irrelevant. Just to be clear, i do not prefer software with a good interface over free software. But many people make this decision consciously and we should take that into account when developing software. I'm saying this as a free-software advocate myself who've been running GNU/Linux for ~15y and helped hundreds of neighbors, friends and comrades free themselves from proprietary software over the years.
    - tempguy9999 7y ago
      > Well, i think what you called convenience is mostly a UI question Gordon bennet. No. Do you really think stallman's view is about who owns your car, or about the knobs on the dashboard? From https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/every-non-free-program-is-an-injustice-richard-stallman-on-the-free-software-movement/8474 https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/every-non-free-program-is... : <<< What’s your definition of free software? Free software is software that respects users’ freedom and community. [...] With any program, there are two possibilities: either the users control the program, or the program controls the users. [...] If they don’t have full control over [the program], then it’s user-subjugating, non-free proprietary software — the program controls the users, and the program’s owners control the program, so it becomes an instrument of unjust power for the owner over the users. >>> > although the initial debate was whether we could trust proprietary software at all Precisely that.
api 7y ago
Of course it does. Nearly everyone today is time poor. Let's say your time costs $40/hour. A "free" open source app that takes three hours to set up costs $120 and if it takes an average of an hour a month to maintain it costs $40/month. This assumes you are an IT person or have that skill set. If you are not most FOSS is unusable or would take orders of magnitude more time to use. The reason for poor UX in FOSS is because UX is often more work than the core of the software and is almost entirely the sort of work that is the least fun. For the most part only commercial software has good UX because programmers have to be paid to do the miserable iterative nit picky polishing work required to achieve it.

Well maybe we free-software people need to think a little more in terms of convenience for newcomers and inexperienced users? That doesn't mean we can't have the scripting/theming system power users just love. But maybe we can provide usable defaults and a nice UI? (When i say a nice UI i don't mean necessarily a GUI with blinks and flashes everywhere. some CLI tools have a good UI, some don't. See for example https://github.com/chmln/sd https://github.com/chmln/sd )

tempguy9999 7y ago
This is not about GUIs, and bringing a trivial sed replacement into it is an utterly irrelevance.
- southerntofu 7y ago
  Well, i think what you called convenience is mostly a UI question in the view of end-users, which is why i brought it to the table although the initial debate was whether we could trust proprietary software at all. Sorry if you thought that was irrelevant. Just to be clear, i do not prefer software with a good interface over free software. But many people make this decision consciously and we should take that into account when developing software. I'm saying this as a free-software advocate myself who've been running GNU/Linux for ~15y and helped hundreds of neighbors, friends and comrades free themselves from proprietary software over the years.
  - tempguy9999 7y ago
    > Well, i think what you called convenience is mostly a UI question Gordon bennet. No. Do you really think stallman's view is about who owns your car, or about the knobs on the dashboard? From https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/every-non-free-program-is-an-injustice-richard-stallman-on-the-free-software-movement/8474 https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/every-non-free-program-is... : <<< What’s your definition of free software? Free software is software that respects users’ freedom and community. [...] With any program, there are two possibilities: either the users control the program, or the program controls the users. [...] If they don’t have full control over [the program], then it’s user-subjugating, non-free proprietary software — the program controls the users, and the program’s owners control the program, so it becomes an instrument of unjust power for the owner over the users. >>> > although the initial debate was whether we could trust proprietary software at all Precisely that.

api 7y ago

Of course it does. Nearly everyone today is time poor. Let's say your time costs $40/hour. A "free" open source app that takes three hours to set up costs $120 and if it takes an average of an hour a month to maintain it costs $40/month. This assumes you are an IT person or have that skill set. If you are not most FOSS is unusable or would take orders of magnitude more time to use. The reason for poor UX in FOSS is because UX is often more work than the core of the software and is almost entirely the sort of work that is the least fun. For the most part only commercial software has good UX because programmers have to be paid to do the miserable iterative nit picky polishing work required to achieve it.