Most software has far more features than most users will want. These extra features simply serve to increase the TCO of software deployments and headaches at the helpdesk. OFB Editor-in-Chief Timothy R. Butler argues that GNU/Linux developers would do well to follow the examples of Apple and Mozilla and move lesser used features out of the way.
Edging Toward the Ninety/Ten
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I enjoyed reading this article.
The more features you have, the more features you have to update and the more bugs you need to work out, so it makes sense to leave out virtually unused features since even the most inadept users will find another way to do what they want to do (or bitch about it).
But here is where I counter the arguement. Sure the Mozilla/KDE organization is looking more like a business every day, but guess what?!? These people are trying to tell the WHOLE “Free Software community” how to do it right, as in their way right. Well guess what Mr. Open for Business, these people are VOLUNTEERS, and although I know you would love to reap the benefits of what you consider free labour, this is THEIR time, and THEIR projects. These volunteers code in the features that they want in their applications. If no one else in the entire world needs that feature, well too bad since they are not the ones coding. If you don’t like all the extras features, why don’t you PAY someone to strip it out of the source? OH but that would mean no more leeching the free benefits of free software, and we can’t have that. Anyone can take the source and start right where the project left off, but they don’t either because they don’t have the resources or they don’t care that much. Most people don’t have the resources, but most likely don’t care enough to try as well. Just enjoy the free product built on the backs of thousands of hours of volunteers, or shut up and pay for your own damn “features”, no more whining about how the Free Software community doesn’t give enough blood to these greedy asses, for most it’s a choice not a job.
This is more important for OSS than say commercial software. Why? Because of the volunteer nature of OSS. If you have a small, easy to understand base, and add on via plugins and scripting. You make it easier for people to jump in and participate. And as the story mentions. Tailering the product to the user, rather than the user to the product is the better way.
I understand that he is not outright demanding that they follow this model, but why should volunteer developers have so much pressure (this article is a VERY light example of the pressures being placed on the community) put on them to compete in this fashion. It’s pretty degrading when companies starts hassling you to make YOUR project their way when they don’t even compensate you properly for the time they demand.
Here is an analogy I think is appropriate to where the FREE (not just OSS) software community stands
Company X is required to provide lunch to it’s employees for some vital reason (I dunno, a union or something).
Company X spends $2000 a week buying the lunches for it’s employees.
Company X learns that the local volunteer food shelter gives away all the ingredients needed for lunch, for free. It also learns that it will cost $400 a week to hire a full time cook.
Company X does the math and starts taking food from the food shelter (let’s assume the shelter cannot refuse giving out free food due to a law/contract or something similar).
Company X discovers that while it is saving $1,600 it could save even more if the food shelter could change the food it tries to collect to a different type and make the employees eat faster (less lunch break) and also make it easier for the cook to, well cook, and move him to part time.
Company X recognizes that the food shelter is unlikely to just change it’s practise just for it since it is based on a different model than a commerical for-profit company.
Company X resorts to critisism, harassment, and constant negative reinforcement to make the local food shelter not feel like it is doing it’s job (even though it’s staff are VOLUNTEERS who ARE doing what they feel is right).
That’s where we stand now. Will Free software be pushed into being capitalism’s new sweat shops? Yes I use sweatshops, which you may not consider all that approriate, but hey as long as a man believes he is free does it matter if he is working in a sweatshop?
These people volunteer they’re time out of good will and for their own personal reasons. Some constructive critisism is ok, but seriously all I am seeing these days in pig town is “How can you make OSS work for you!”
Some constructive critisism is ok, but seriously all I am seeing these days in pig town is “How can you make OSS work for you!”
Couldn’t agree more. What I did is gather very much strength and try not to argue with every stupid line that comes around. At first I just jumped on everything, sometimes making a fool out of myself (well, just my opinion, but it counts, doesn’t it). When I hear rightful criticism, I tend to be clear and balanced in my responses, always trying to pull people to the middle. You only can totally respect the choices induced in today’s computer world if you’re not taking sides unknowingly or blindly or based solely on zealots’ argumentations.
Overall, this article does make a point. We OSS advocates always bitch and moan about all the bloatware that our favourite company in Redmond tries to sell us. But just around the corner, some of our own “family” is trying to keep up with the feature-race.
Now it’s easy to say to these family-members to get thier act together, and start making software like in the good ol’ days. Now this is were Whatever Guy hits the nail on the head. As I understand it, who are we, as users/reviewers/devs at another project, to say to someone who is doing it for the fun, change your ways.
Then again, this is the volunteer’s project, and he needs to take responsibility for it. That responsibility can come in the form of, either admitting bugs or listening to the users. Most of the OSS projects actually do this.
In the end, we are left with a contradiction of sorts. Yes, it is a voluntary service, but that does not mean that the devs should shun thier users/responsibilities.
Very good article! Especially KDE and its apps could benefit from everything mentioned in this article.
Konqueror is really a horrible example of a UI, and even though the icons have become a lot nicer in recent years, the interface itself still (and I’m truely sorry for saying it like this) sucks.
The only toolbar buttons I’m using are the back/up button and that’s it. Things like CVS functionality should be inside the icon view (automatically) like it is on Windows using programs like TortoiseCVS (and that doesn’t mean that there’s no use for a separate graphical CVS program).
The point of this article is a suggestion for improving the usability of applications. It’s not OSS specific, and it’s take it or leave it. I don’t think it should offend OSS developers in any way.
It’s not about having less features, but rather having the most common/useful features stand out. You can have as many features under the surface and out of the way (where “experts” will find them). I appreciated the copy-paste via keybord vs. toolbar vs. drag’n’drop example.
Less but more focused features is an interesting suggestion itself.
It also reminded me of criticism against Common Lisp (tons of functionality, thrown altogther (confusing to a beginner – what’s important and what’s not?), and yet not enough functionality in some cases (lack of focused features – libraries). And this is programmers -by definition experts- we’re talking about.
First of all, let me say that I think there is a huge difference between having a ton of useful features for power users to exploit and putting in a bunch of useless crap just to add more marketing ‘bullet-points’ on the back of the box.
That being said, I think Firefox is a really bad example of how to do things. For me, I use at least a dozen different extensions and having to go and hunt them down each time I install the browser is a royal PITA. Opera has much of this functionality built right in and it is STILL smaller and faster than the barebones Firefox. A better way to do things is to build all these features into the app, but make the modular so that those people who don’t want/need them can turn them off, or just have most of them turned off by default and let us power users turn them on as we find them.
Basically it would depend of the application in question.
The base should be minimal. Now depending on the software, like FF, modular would be key. OO.o on the other hand has the most useful features w/out the bloat. The only thing missing is the ability to install only 1 or 2 of the apps.
All, in all, I stand by “Less Is More”.
> That being said, I think Firefox is a really bad example
> of how to do things. For me, I use at least a dozen
> different extensions and having to go and hunt them down
> each time I install the browser is a royal PITA.
The emphasis is on “hunt them down”, right? If there was some kind of auto-install menu where you just have to check those extensions you want, the problem wouldn’t be as serious…
Mac OS X has gone from a delay-laden buggy OS to the most popular and polished desktop Unix-like system available. Sure Apple pays dozens of interface gurus, but I do not believe that this is what gives Apple the edge. Instead, it is an ironclad focus on the average user. Not by limiting power, but by molding each tool’s interface to how the average user will work.
YES!!!
Apple is not successful because its software has less features. It is successful because it has a lot of very useful features, all of which are easy to use and work together like clockwork. I drank the OSS kool-aid for years. I ranted against proprietary systems and argued for open standards. I’m not an Apple shill, but let me tell you, although the Mac software environment is not perfect, it is the closest thing *to* desktop computing perfection at the moment – far, far ahead of OSS in every category except price. I bring up the Mac because it is an example of some very important broad themes that are necessary for a good computing experience: cohesiveness, standardization (whether open or closed, but closed is a lot easier), functionality, end-user & third-party support behind the platform, compatibility, dependability, ease of use, ease of configuration to name a few. OSS ranks very low on most of these. The Mac teaches me that proprietary is not necessarily a bad thing – it’s UNITY that is paramount. Unity underscores everything.
I think the open-source movement needs to understand that it absolutely MUST set aside its differences – even may they be great differences – and work together to accomplish whatever task it is that it wants to accomplish. This may be a problem since it probably can’t even settle on one goal. (The “overthrow M$” contingent vs. the “leave me alone in my geeky computing world of the 1970s” contingent vs. the “make an OS for grandma” contingent vs. the “make an OS I can install in my car stereo” contingent). Therefore, since the OSS community cannot settle on a goal, I think it does not have the long-term ability to produce a comparable alternative to Apple/Microsoft as long as there is competition between the two, as their faster pace of development will soon leave divided OSS developers years and years behind. But I think it can, and should, try. It needs to leave the FSF cult by the wayside and do what it does best: copying already-established features, or rather core philosophical values, from successful commercial products. I think there is room for OSS among unsatisfied MS/Apple customers and also among the poor.
The small-component-does-one-thing-and-does-it-well-design is a sound principle. I see this trend dissapear though. It is probably because it is very hard to make this usable in the current GUI paradigms.
The best thing about the cli was/is the standardized interface to every component (pipes and stuff). If a similar design could be incorporated into a GUI we could get back to a component based design.
Jeff Raskins, touches this in his book and THE. But I thinkt this can be done much easier. True OOP in a largescale project like a GUI framework… who’s up for the task? =)
The key thing to get rid off is Applications: Collections of data manipulation tools bundled with a data fetcher/storer/renderer. Put the fetch/store/render part in the OS, as small components ofcourse.
I think you are partly right and party wrong. The “small component” paradigm is very useful to build aplications not originally intended, but it is not feasible for the average user. It is a programming paradigm, not a UI paradigm. UI sits on top of that.
Even worse, the way it was implemented in Unix (i.e. pipes) is complete crap. Pipes force one component to serialize its data into a byte stream, and the second component to de-serialize it, with lots of useless overhead and complications with encoding and character sets. More modern implementations (message-passing, RPC, whatever) are more appropriate.
The most useful system would be one in which components are designed as components; communication between them works seamlessly and without incompatibilities; and applications are little more than a set of components glued together, maybe using some kind of scripting language that the more-than-average user can easily learn to glue his/her own applications together.
“Jeff Raskins, touches this in his book and THE. But I thinkt this can be done much easier. True OOP in a largescale project like a GUI framework… who’s up for the task? =) ”
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GeneraOs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlisp
http://www.cliki.net/CLIM
[Morin (IP: —.L1.srv.t-online.de)]
”
The most useful system would be one in which components are designed as components; communication between them works seamlessly and without incompatibilities; and applications are little more than a set of components glued together, maybe using some kind of scripting language that the more-than-average user can easily learn to glue his/her own applications together. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc
http://www.rexxla.org/
The easy solution to this is having “levels” in the application. More advanced gets more complex menus that assume a greater degree of experience and understanding. Finally you have an “advanced” menu which has all the not displayed options for any level.
Very good article! Especially KDE and its apps could benefit from everything mentioned in this article.
I agree the choise of default settings in KDE makes it truely horrible but Gnome could improve a lot as well.
One example, why does Nautilus allow an ordinary user to view the entire file system. An ordinary user is not allowed to edit things in /etc or add things in /bin, /lib /usr/bin, /usr/lib,… Why are they shown in file dialogs etc. A normal user will almost never use them. IMHO Nautilus should show only “home/”, “users/”, “network/” where users is a virtual folder displaying the home directories of all users if they are readable. The sysadmin should be able to add additonal shortcuts to places for shared stuff.
The trick would be not to show more information than necessary in any given situation. This is how it is possible for fighter pilots to manage their increasinly complex system, why not apply the same line of thinking to the desktop. To some extent Apple does this and I think this is one reason why MacOS-X usually comes out on top when compared to Gnome and most other free Desktops
Use for viewing the file system:
When I need to view icons under /opt/gnome or under /opt/kde or /usr/share.
When I want to find a sound file under the same dirs…
What if I’m a little technical and I want to “view” a configuration file under /etc and I don’t want to use the command line?
—–
Re: on Konqueror
Sorry, but konqueror as a web browser has basically the same external appearance as firefox.
Well guess what Mr. Open for Business, these people are VOLUNTEERS, and although I know you would love to reap the benefits of what you consider free labour, this is THEIR time, and THEIR projects. These volunteers code in the features that they want in their applications. If no one else in the entire world needs that feature, well too bad since they are not the ones coding.
Well, this just demonstrates the short-sighted attitude which hobbles so many free software projects – that code is king, that things like ‘usability’ are just words in a dictionary, and only coders are entitled to an opinion.
Well, if all you want is writing cool code – fine, but don’t complain if nobody’s using your program.
But if you want people to use your program, better get comfortable to the fact that you’ll spend a lot of time making the program usable, instead of adding features.
When I need to view icons under /opt/gnome or under /opt/kde or /usr/share.
When I want to find a sound file under the same dirs…
Now, I wonder, How is a non technical user supposed know how to find the icons under /opt/gnome or whatever? In the situations where he needs to select or use or install an icon he should be presented with some kind of icon browser. Similar reasoning could be applied to sound files. There should be different tools for different kind of work, we just need to choose the right one.
What if I’m a little technical and I want to “view” a configuration file under /etc and I don’t want to use the command line?
Your bank clerk, your secretary, english teacher,… seldom feel technical. And even if they sometimes do, their employers are seldom paying them for that technincal feeling, but rather for doing work related to their area of expertise.
Feeling technical is for sysadmins, and they should of course be able to see the whole file system tree.
However, in most businesses there are fewer sysadmins than ordinary users, so we probably do better in designing our defaults for these users rather than the sysadmins.
The sysadmins are generally more educated than the ordinary users and they have much better chance of succeeding in turning on things they need, than ordinary users have in turning off things that they don’t need and is mostly in their way.
“and only coders are entitled to an opinion.”
If you couldn’t afford a car and a organization in your city has free car rentals for the poor, Would you bitch at the company to provide you BMW’s and Porche’s? You can give advice, but don’t whine like a baby if they don’t follow it. Companies are whining because Free Software isn’t the magic bullet they thought it was, and now they are putting pressure to have free software developers compete with full time for-profit developers, without providing anything positive. No code, no money(most of the time), no constructive advice, just “follow our model and help our bottom line!”.
Yes the coders are the ones whose opinions matter since they are the ones coding.
Nice analogy, except that this is not about not having BMWs and Porsches, it’s about having free BMWs and Porsches with so many gadgets that you can’t find the steering wheel anymore.
And this author was not, in fact whining – he was stating his view of things.
Companies are whining because Free Software isn’t the magic bullet they thought it was, and now they are putting pressure to have free software developers compete with full time for-profit developers, without providing anything positive.
Well, nobody forces the codes to do voluntary work – if they offer stuff for free, they shouldn’t complain if people do take it and give nothing back. And why should companies choose free software when is harder to use than commercial one?
Oh, and by the way: I am writing free software myself (beer and speech) – what are your contributions to The Cause?
Well, this just demonstrates the short-sighted attitude which hobbles so many free software projects – that code is king, that things like ‘usability’ are just words in a dictionary, and only coders are entitled to an opinion.
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Things like ‘usability’ are a laughable *JOKE*, especially when it’s coming from mouths of the GUI-hugging Amiga,BE,Mac and Windows Crowd.
Free software projects have done just fine over the past 20-30 years by *IGNORING* you bunch of free-loading idiots and basically doing their our thing and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.
It continues to amaze and amuse me that people who contribute *NOTHING* to Free Software/OSS projects constantly get bent out of shape when their “advice” gets ignored after acting like a bunch of stuck-up jackasses who seem to think they have some right to tell other people what they should or should not be doing with their time and resources.
News Flash people. Go back and use Windows/Mac Commerical and Shareware software.
We in the the Free Software/Open Source don’t give a damn because we never really cared about you to begin with and the software wasn’t designed with you in mind.
You parasites leeched onto it.
Now do us all a favor and get lost.
>> By Lars (IP: —.clsp.qwest.net) – Posted on 2005-02-05 01:29:44
Nice analogy, except that this is not about not having BMWs and Porsches, it’s about having free BMWs and Porsches with so many gadgets that you can’t find the steering wheel anymore.
>>
Its more about like having a free tank or a nice spartan old-school go-anywhere jeep than having a BMW.
>> By Lars (IP: —.clsp.qwest.net) – Posted on 2005-02-05 01:29:44
And this author was not, in fact whining – he was stating his view of things.
>>
I did not see it as whining either but I see the overall goals of a simple straight forward interface. Sounds like what a lot of linux/KDE users despise about the spartan gnome environment actually.
But I like it.
Hell, Havoc Pennington would probably be able to have a long productive conversation with this guy because it sounds like they agree on a lot of things. I still wish they would include the “use home dir as your desktop” and “navigational” mode options in Nautilus somewhere in the preferences. It would cut down on half the Nautilus questions on the gnomedesktop forums.
>> By Lars (IP: —.clsp.qwest.net) – Posted on 2005-02-05 01:29:44
Well, nobody forces the codes to do voluntary work – if they offer stuff for free, they shouldn’t complain if people do take it and give nothing back. And why should companies choose free software when is harder to use than commercial one?
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You are making so many assumptions in this above statement.
I know a lot of companies that use FSF/open source programs for tons of diverse uses. Harder to use?
Depends.
It still takes less Unix sysadmins to run more servers than it does Windows admins. Its the arguement used for years that blows the whole idea that Unix guys cost more and that ups the total cost of ownership for a unix shop. Its still takes less of us to run more servers. I am a sysadmin and I know. My partner and I admin about 62 servers on our own.
I mean geez people open source/free/gnu software has been around a very, very long time from sendmail to apache even when most of it ran on commercial *Nixes before the BSD/Linux solutions really grew into the enterprise role.
Bind anyone? Come on. Companies all over the world have been using this stuff for long enough they really ought to know better than to get sucked up in the hype.
There is no silver bullet or perfect OS solution boys and girls.
Corporations should choose their software based not idealogy but on need.
That quite frankly is what got the free software in the door to begin with.
That is right. Free software from bind, to apache to sendmail etc…etc…etc.. It just did the job. When other solutions were giving nothing but crap. So companies did what they needed to do to make money.
Who are the developers complaining about people giving nothing back?
I just know more than a few that are tired of the trite newbie bitchin’. Its not so much that people are not contributing code but that they are literally getting cursed out on their own mailing lists because some fresh windows newb thinks the program should exactly like their old windows counterpart app.
>> By Lars (IP: —.clsp.qwest.net) – Posted on 2005-02-05 01:29:44
Oh, and by the way: I am writing free software myself (beer and speech) – what are your contributions to The Cause?
>>
Oh god, as a coder you should know that even with the great contributions corporations like RH, Sun, Suse and Ximian (now Novell) have made to linux and gnome and KDE most of these guys still can’t get many of these companies to let them use official time for a lot of their projects. Even when they are employed by the above companies they still have to code many of their open projects in their own time.
You most of all should understand then if you are getting something for free and don’t contribute back then you have no room to bitch.
At least fill out a bug report or make a feature request. I mean bugzilla is not magic people.
A company I worked for wanted a new feature in xpdf because they used some of the ps to pdf functionality of the side apps right? They got one of our developers to contribute the patch or when that did not work for another project we hired the developer as a consultant to fix the thing we wanted fixed and never demanded he close any of it up. Why? Because we were using as part of a solution to make money. That is an example of a corporation playing a decent corporate citizen.
Its not like Linux = KDE and its complexity or Gnome and its spartan inclusion of options. Its just a kernel that all stuff rides on. After all, I run a Solaris box at work that runs gnome 2.8 thanks to blastwave.org.
Gnome has the simplicity line down that takes too far sometimes. But look over the latest 2.8 desktop in Fedora or Ubuntu and then re-read this guy’s article.
BTW, most of the folks doing this do NOT complain if no-one uses their software and could care less. They do it because they love to code and they are fullfilling an intellectual itch.
It is not hobbling the “movement” to think about the code first. Sometimes even I think it goes too far but that is one of the things I love about linux.
It is not the clutter-fest cluster-f*ck of most commercial software including some inane feature simply because one big account complained once or even worse changing a feature for the same reason.
The code IS the thing and why shouldn’t be?
If I am going to do something in my free time for the fun of it and it stops being fun because I become shackled by a company that is not paying my bills to slide the “movement” forward, then it stops being worth it at all anymore.
First, thanks to those who got the point of the piece.
Now the first disturbing assumption is that those of us who suggest the need for more usability aren’t actually contributing any code anywhere. I’m no uber coder, but I have several small GPL’ed projects that I’ve released in the past, and I’m working on something bigger (and yes, I’m focusing on usability).
Moreover, this article does not demand anything of volunteers. The thing isn’t so much an issue of getting people to do it, but getting the community to accept the concept. I could pay 100 developers to simplify a project, but if the project does not philosophically agree with my argument, it does not matter if I provide the code. This is a philosophical issue more than a coding issue. Rather than complaining about GNOME not having every power user option, why not appreciate it and promote it to newbies that will find a simple interface an asset? Or, in my example concerning Konqueror, why not take some of the toolbar icons off in the default config — no major reworkings, just switching the default configuration files around and you’ve improved usability.
The thing is, most people in a large scale project want it to succeed and get more developers. Well, you can bet that Firefox developers are getting their wishes by taking time to consider usability. Likewise, the GNOME developers to a lesser extent.
At any rate, it is not the media’s job to cheerlead. Our job is to report and comment on the situation of things to aid readers. If it seems reasonable to suggest simplifying UI’s is something relevant to my readership, I am going to advocate that. Sycophantical responses help neither the projects nor the users.
Things like ‘usability’ are a laughable *JOKE*, especially when it’s coming from mouths of the GUI-hugging Amiga,BE,Mac and Windows Crowd.
Free software projects have done just fine over the past 20-30 years by *IGNORING* you bunch of free-loading idiots and basically doing their our thing and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.
Have they? True, they have survived, but that is far from doing well. Ask yourself, why is it that most secretaries use MS-Word and not LaTeX, Why is it that Microsoft dominates the desktop and not free software?
I tell you. By the time Xerox, Apple and Microsoft sat down doing research on how users interact with software and how software can help people in their everyday tasks, there was a very unfruitful macho attitude in the free software community. It was like if it couldn’t be done in “vi” it wasn’t worh doing. It was like if they wanted things to be difficult to show the world how bright they were. That lost valuable time.
It continues to amaze and amuse me that people who contribute *NOTHING* to Free Software/OSS projects constantly get bent out of shape when their “advice” gets ignored after acting like a bunch of stuck-up jackasses who seem to think they have some right to tell other people what they should or should not be doing with their time and resources.
The laughable usability joke, is in fact so funny that some people spend years to go to university and get PHDs in the subject. And you think they have nothing to contribute. To get a userinterface right can be just as difficult as coding it. It requires knowledge of psycology, group dynamics, cognition theory, cultural differences, human language,… All knowledge that people dealing only with code seldom possess. Most of them havn’t even heard of basic stuff like Fitts law.
As long as you code your app for yourself only you are entitled to make it as bad as you want. However many open source developers want to make a living out of their coding. This usually means that they need to convice other people to use their apps. The strange thing about users is that they generlly totally ignore, to you, important stuff like how beautiful your code is, and go for irrelevant things such as how your application makes their life simpler.
The question is, will you still think usability is irrelevant or laughable when some other FOSS developer makes an application that does the same things that yours do, but in a usable way and thus lands the support contracts, and new job offers instead of you.
Now do us all a favor and get lost.
Sure, but the loss is yours.
At any rate, it is not the media’s job to cheerlead. Our job is to report and comment on the situation of things to aid readers. If it seems reasonable to suggest simplifying UI’s is something relevant to my readership, I am going to advocate that. Sycophantical responses help neither the projects nor the users.
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And Free Software/Open Source projects have every right to ignore the totally meaningless technobabbling coming from those like you in the “Media”.
Grow up.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc
> http://www.rexxla.org/
Thanks for the links.
Rick, you miss the point. Some people (like you) could care less what users think. Other developers (including myself) do care. Do you write Free Software programs? Do you run a business that depends on Free Software? Do you file bug reports faithfully and attempt to troubleshoot problems? Have you worked for a FOSS advocacy group?
I’ve done all of these things. I don’t say that to brag. In each case, I’ve done little compared to many others. But that is to say that now that I wear a different hat (that of the media), I do not come without any perspective. I’ve played the role of a PR guy for FOSS projects and I know how to do that. I’ve written software and been criticized. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, as they say.
When I offer a commentary, the community can take it or leave it. This is just like any other type of commentary. Politicians sometimes do and sometimes do not heed the words of commentators. Sometimes the commentators are right, sometimes they are wrong. But ignoring it just because it is inconvenient or because you only want to hear people saying what you think is something that should be done at one’s own peril. The community has chosen to pull itself outside of its own little area and try to be adopted by the rest of the world — KDE and GNOME, for example, both aim at enterprise adoption.
Until they say that they no longer want that, they should (and usually do) expect to be treated like any other organization offering a product. Once you enter the real world, it doesn’t matter how the product was produced, it will be critiqued. That’s life. It does not mitigate anyone’s thankfulness for their hard effort.
Rick, then why don’t you quit reading GNU/Linux news and other people’s concerns and just go worry about your own. Some people do have to worry about why their office workers are using MS Word rather than LaTeX. Good for you that you don’t. But not everyone can or should take the laissez faire attitude that you do about it, and the fact that you don’t understand that is quite telling.
I am going to resist giving the response that I would like to, for responding to the first, vitriolic part of your comment would indeed make me an idiot.
To the second part, I disagree and shall respond since it allows me to demonstrate my point. Because I do serve as the defacto IT manager for an organization, I do wring my hands over which application is best. Only the biggest organizations “can do something about it.” The rest of us look at the available solutions and pick the best one of the bunch. MS Word might be it, but that doesn’t mean one can just laugh about the computers you are responsible for and how they are going to get viruses. After all, I’m the one that has to clean them up then. Therefore, I, like many of our readers, have a vested interest in seeing an easy to use, virus free solution.
If you wish to have a civilized discussion, feel free to respond.