5 ms·

Free, community maintained software have all sorts of problems too. Essentially, the problem is that the software is made to fit the developers needs, not the

by GuB-42 5y ago

Free, community maintained software have all sorts of problems too. Essentially, the problem is that the software is made to fit the developers needs, not the user needs. If they both have the same needs, that's great, if they don't most people are better off with a commercial solution. Also keep in mind that in most major free software, the "community" is mostly for-profit companies that want the software to fit their own needs and they have no money to spend for anything else. This is free software working as intended, and in some cases (like Linux), it works really great. But it is not a silver bullet and proprietary software still is the best answer in some cases.

swiley 5y ago
>fit the developers needs, not the user needs. This is why I qualified open source with "community maintained." When there's a strong partition between the community and the developers then FOSS looks a lot like closed software.
- vimacs2 5y ago
  > This is why I qualified open source with "community maintained." When there's a strong partition between the community and the developers then FOSS looks a lot like closed software. I'm just going to come out and say that I think Gnome and Firefox are two of the worst offenders of this.
  - swiley 5y ago
    Right. At least with Gnome even distro maintainers struggle to keep up with the churn and build it, users have little hope of success there. The result is a partition between the community and the developers who spend a lot of time in the code. Firefox has a similar situation although I would argue it isn't quite as bad.
    - zxzax 5y ago
      If you have suggestions on how to fix that I think a lot of people would love to hear it, but for now, sadly the task of building a fully complete desktop and application platform means that there is a lot of code and a lot of churn. This is true of every single major platform.
  - voakbasda 5y ago
    Worst, but not nearly the only. This kind of partitioning describes the vast majority of new projects that I encounter and have an interest in helping. Most ironic are those projects that simultaneously purport to have a mission for human rights and freedom.
  - zxzax 5y ago
    Not really, you just happened to pick two projects that are particularly large and particularly old. Drive-by commits are a lot less valuable in those type of projects, unfortunately, but you can still find places to contribute if you spend the time to look.
    - vimacs2 5y ago
      While I did pick the projects for their notability, I could point out the fact that Gnome have an active disdain for extension developers and the entire idea of extensions as well as Mozilla continuing to make unpopular decision after unpopular decision with their browser.
vladvasiliu 5y ago
> Essentially, the problem is that the software is made to fit the developers needs, not the user needs. If they both have the same needs, that's great, if they don't most people are better off with a commercial solution. The first part may be true, but the second doesn't follow. In the case of software like Windows, etc, can you say it actually fits the user's needs? I mean sure, if Windows does what you expect and Linux / macOS don't, sure, it's great. But what if it doesn't? I really hate non-resizable control windows, what can I do about it? I also hate the pure white interface that burns my eyes. How should I go about tweaking it? The list of ways Windows annoys me is extremely long, and I don't feel like I have any say in them. The same goes for macOS, though to a lesser degree. This software seems to be made to benefit the "developers" (MS). People have been complaining about telemetry in Win10 and MS just ignores it. You could argue that since I'm still using my 2013 MBP and basically only use Windows when I have no choice (gaming), I'm not really a client any more of either MS or Apple. I guess in the case of bespoke software, or even in a case where each client is big enough for a company to listen to them, then they may steer the software's direction. But for a random consumer OS? I really don't think so. My client is a fairly big European company, and they use Windows on their employees' desktops. There are ways in which Windows annoys them, but they have exactly 0 ways of changing this (other than dropping Windows).

by GuB-42 5y ago

swiley 5y ago

>fit the developers needs, not the user needs. This is why I qualified open source with "community maintained." When there's a strong partition between the community and the developers then FOSS looks a lot like closed software.

vimacs2 5y ago
> This is why I qualified open source with "community maintained." When there's a strong partition between the community and the developers then FOSS looks a lot like closed software. I'm just going to come out and say that I think Gnome and Firefox are two of the worst offenders of this.
- swiley 5y ago
  Right. At least with Gnome even distro maintainers struggle to keep up with the churn and build it, users have little hope of success there. The result is a partition between the community and the developers who spend a lot of time in the code. Firefox has a similar situation although I would argue it isn't quite as bad.
  - zxzax 5y ago
    If you have suggestions on how to fix that I think a lot of people would love to hear it, but for now, sadly the task of building a fully complete desktop and application platform means that there is a lot of code and a lot of churn. This is true of every single major platform.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  Worst, but not nearly the only. This kind of partitioning describes the vast majority of new projects that I encounter and have an interest in helping. Most ironic are those projects that simultaneously purport to have a mission for human rights and freedom.
- zxzax 5y ago
  Not really, you just happened to pick two projects that are particularly large and particularly old. Drive-by commits are a lot less valuable in those type of projects, unfortunately, but you can still find places to contribute if you spend the time to look.
  - vimacs2 5y ago
    While I did pick the projects for their notability, I could point out the fact that Gnome have an active disdain for extension developers and the entire idea of extensions as well as Mozilla continuing to make unpopular decision after unpopular decision with their browser.

vladvasiliu 5y ago

> Essentially, the problem is that the software is made to fit the developers needs, not the user needs. If they both have the same needs, that's great, if they don't most people are better off with a commercial solution. The first part may be true, but the second doesn't follow. In the case of software like Windows, etc, can you say it actually fits the user's needs? I mean sure, if Windows does what you expect and Linux / macOS don't, sure, it's great. But what if it doesn't? I really hate non-resizable control windows, what can I do about it? I also hate the pure white interface that burns my eyes. How should I go about tweaking it? The list of ways Windows annoys me is extremely long, and I don't feel like I have any say in them. The same goes for macOS, though to a lesser degree. This software seems to be made to benefit the "developers" (MS). People have been complaining about telemetry in Win10 and MS just ignores it. You could argue that since I'm still using my 2013 MBP and basically only use Windows when I have no choice (gaming), I'm not really a client any more of either MS or Apple. I guess in the case of bespoke software, or even in a case where each client is big enough for a company to listen to them, then they may steer the software's direction. But for a random consumer OS? I really don't think so. My client is a fairly big European company, and they use Windows on their employees' desktops. There are ways in which Windows annoys them, but they have exactly 0 ways of changing this (other than dropping Windows).