Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

[Dave Head <rally2xs@earthlink.net>]

This is correct.  Anything that doesn't have a transfer of money or other
consideration has no incentive for the provider to be concerned with the
consumer's satisfaction.

Its like socialized medicine.  Anyone can get a taste of that if they join the
military.  I was about as sick as I'd ever been, fever, etc. and went to the
doctor in Ft. Monmouth, NJ.  Got aspirin, nothing else.  Now, it may have been
a virus and there was no real treatment for it, but they didn't bother to
explain that.  That's the real difference.  Like all other "free" services, or
goods, that was not a concern of theirs.

Dave Head


On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 12:51:44 GMT, Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>
wrote:

>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.