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"becomes difficult to compete with the wider marketplace" Seems like Linux has been competing just fine, but I take it you mean "a desktop linux that appeals

"becomes difficult to compete with the wider marketplace" Seems like Linux has been competing just fine, but I take it you mean "a desktop linux that appeals to windows/osx users by being similar to them so the learning curve is small". That seems to more be about a lack of effort and manpower, not because people are pulling in different directions but more that the people who would actually build that stuff don't want it enough to dedicate their free time to building it. That and designers don't seem to be nearly as interested in contributing to FOSS as do programmers. Because non-technical/non-contributing users are nothing but a drain to FOSS projects. A success is having a large number of contributors, all cooperating to solve a shared problem so they can all spend more time on something else, with some of them dedicating themselves to the problem because it's interesting and helps their friends. No one is doing it at the scale necessary for the same reason Apple isn't spending all it's money developing products for people who couldn't possibly pay for them. They aren't stupid.

relate 12y ago
"Because non-technical/non-contributing users are nothing but a drain to FOSS projects." except that the size of the userbase drives companies to port their products to the platform.
- freshhawk 12y ago
  Sure, there are long term high level strategic interests that could be helped for sure. How convincing is this though? "I would like you to volunteer to work on this project that you don't want and wouldn't use (and therefore probably won't do a great job with). You will be inundated with support requests from unskilled users. I would like you to do this because if a lot of people do it, it might convince a unspecified number of companies to port their software to linux at some unspecified time in the future. That's only if you are completely successful building this for and marketing this to people who you don't understand or care about. You will have no help from designers or user interface people because they don't give a shit about you or this. Design and user experience will be the most important parts of this, technical quality will not influence success because the users don't care about that. You will get no social capital from this because the users don't give a shit about what you do. Do this instead of one of the huge number of really interesting projects building things you would love to have that are on your plate right now, the ones where your peers will recognize, appreciate, understand and value your hard work."
  - woah 12y ago
    Big issue here is the issue that open source has with designers. It's really frustrating to try to get a clear vision executed in the "doocracy" of an OSS project, where developers will often implement features to "scratch an itch".
    - freshhawk 12y ago
      Yeah, it's hard not to see that as something it would be good to get past. Developers deal with that at the architecture level decently enough. Maybe the filling in part is just less fun than it is for software so it's harder to get volunteers? Maybe it's how credit/social capital works in a different community? It is frustrating, those skills make such a difference.
ZenoArrow 12y ago
"Because non-technical/non-contributing users are nothing but a drain to FOSS projects." I'm sorry, but that's absolute baloney in the context of the parent post. By and large neither Windows or OSX users need to deal with low level OS stuff, whereas Linux users frequently do. These sorts of issues affect long time users and new users. From what I've seen, Linux users tend to either go straight to a mainstream distro, or distro hop for a while, get bored or frustrated with dealing with unnecessary complications, and end up on a mainstream distro as a result. At first you take pride in learning more, but after a while you just want something that works and gets out of your way. Describing user wants as drains on FOSS means that you're ignoring the issues that are drains for everyone.
- freshhawk 12y ago
  These problems you describe aren't present for the people being asked to solve the problem, so they don't volunteer their time to fix it. In my experience they aren't even problems for beginner computer users or people who don't need to unlearn Windows/Mac-isms post Ubuntu and modern hardware detection. edit: I should add, I'm not saying a project solving these problems wouldn't be popular among users or generally great for Gnu/Linux as a whole, I'm explaining why it's not popular among potential developers. And when you aren't working in a market capitalism framework a large number of potential non-contributing users isn't enough to get things done.
zanny 12y ago
> "a desktop linux that appeals to windows/osx users by being similar to them so the learning curve is small". Isn't that what Zorin is / is meant to be? http://zorin-os.com/ http://zorin-os.com/

relate 12y ago

"Because non-technical/non-contributing users are nothing but a drain to FOSS projects." except that the size of the userbase drives companies to port their products to the platform.

freshhawk 12y ago
Sure, there are long term high level strategic interests that could be helped for sure. How convincing is this though? "I would like you to volunteer to work on this project that you don't want and wouldn't use (and therefore probably won't do a great job with). You will be inundated with support requests from unskilled users. I would like you to do this because if a lot of people do it, it might convince a unspecified number of companies to port their software to linux at some unspecified time in the future. That's only if you are completely successful building this for and marketing this to people who you don't understand or care about. You will have no help from designers or user interface people because they don't give a shit about you or this. Design and user experience will be the most important parts of this, technical quality will not influence success because the users don't care about that. You will get no social capital from this because the users don't give a shit about what you do. Do this instead of one of the huge number of really interesting projects building things you would love to have that are on your plate right now, the ones where your peers will recognize, appreciate, understand and value your hard work."
- woah 12y ago
  Big issue here is the issue that open source has with designers. It's really frustrating to try to get a clear vision executed in the "doocracy" of an OSS project, where developers will often implement features to "scratch an itch".
  - freshhawk 12y ago
    Yeah, it's hard not to see that as something it would be good to get past. Developers deal with that at the architecture level decently enough. Maybe the filling in part is just less fun than it is for software so it's harder to get volunteers? Maybe it's how credit/social capital works in a different community? It is frustrating, those skills make such a difference.

ZenoArrow 12y ago

"Because non-technical/non-contributing users are nothing but a drain to FOSS projects." I'm sorry, but that's absolute baloney in the context of the parent post. By and large neither Windows or OSX users need to deal with low level OS stuff, whereas Linux users frequently do. These sorts of issues affect long time users and new users. From what I've seen, Linux users tend to either go straight to a mainstream distro, or distro hop for a while, get bored or frustrated with dealing with unnecessary complications, and end up on a mainstream distro as a result. At first you take pride in learning more, but after a while you just want something that works and gets out of your way. Describing user wants as drains on FOSS means that you're ignoring the issues that are drains for everyone.

freshhawk 12y ago
These problems you describe aren't present for the people being asked to solve the problem, so they don't volunteer their time to fix it. In my experience they aren't even problems for beginner computer users or people who don't need to unlearn Windows/Mac-isms post Ubuntu and modern hardware detection. edit: I should add, I'm not saying a project solving these problems wouldn't be popular among users or generally great for Gnu/Linux as a whole, I'm explaining why it's not popular among potential developers. And when you aren't working in a market capitalism framework a large number of potential non-contributing users isn't enough to get things done.

zanny 12y ago

> "a desktop linux that appeals to windows/osx users by being similar to them so the learning curve is small". Isn't that what Zorin is / is meant to be? http://zorin-os.com/ http://zorin-os.com/