Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Yes, user interface is important. But also a lot of other usability 
factors. Many "Open Source" things out there might have some marvelous 
functionality but you have to download them, then all the pieces they 
rely on and maybe you have to compile them. Perhaps you then discover 
there are subtle differences in your system versus the author's system 
and you're trying to figure out what switch settings or environment 
variables you have to tweak, etc.

Whereas with a typical application bought from a commercial company, one 
expects to insert the disk, click on "Install", answer "Yes" to 
everything and see the app come up and work. It had better have either 
really easy to understand features on its face or it had better have 
really good documentation - or both. If it doesn't look good in these 
and other respects, the company will be out of business soon. Whereas 
your typical freebie download "Open Source" project can easily afford to 
say "If you don't like it, go pile sand! I'm a *volunteer* and you're 
getting it *free*."

That's basically what I meant about an "Open Source" project needing to 
meet up with certain quality expectations people will have in the 
business world. Not all Open Source projects are going to be a pile of 
defication and not all commercial products are going to be amazing 
wonders. But if one wants to make an Open Source product that is going 
to draw users away from shrink-wrapped packages from commercial vendors, 
one had better look at the market's expectations and what the 
competition is doing *right* in meeting with them.

Commercial software users are not "geeks". They don't find great 
pleasure in tinkering with an app or marveling at how wonderfully it was 
constructed internally. They want to take it out of the box and use it 
to get a job done. That's what "Open Source" has to deal with if it 
wants to overcome Microsoft's market dominance.


MDC


Stephane Richard wrote:
> 
> And to that, I have to agree.   A good user interface (in today's business
> world) is just as important than good functionality.  Let's face it,
> business users today just dont want to have to do Shift-Ctrl-Alt-F4 to get
> something to print.  they wanna click the file menu, then print. Or they
> want to push that little button with the Printer drawn on it.  It's been my
> professional experiences.  Some hard core users like to have that complicate
> key combo.

-- 
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Marin David Condic
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My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

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