On 2004.04.03 16:07, IanBell wrote:
I have a great personal dislike of articles like this. Instead of bleating, the writer should have had a constructive dialogue with the authors of CUPS. Try doing that with Windows!
Of course it is easier to criticise than to do.
There is another issue though which is that his comments don't just apply to CUPS but to much other free and open source software and maybe he is hoping that, by writing the article, more than one of these projects will take his comments on board.
I do seriously wonder though whether the people with the techical knowlege to write a piece of software can ever put themselves in the shoes of someone who knows nothing about the task that piece of software is intended to do.
Imagine you are the writers of the Berkeley MPEG encoder. Can you ever put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know anything about how an MPEG encoder works and just wants to use one without having to choose any but the most basic settings? What about if you've written GIMP - can you imagine someone who is clueless about what operations are posible on digital images trying to use it?
I suspect if this level of usability is to be achieved someone technical needs to work with someone completely non-technical so the non-technical person can keep pointing out what mere mortals are unlikely to know or care about.
The final issue that needs to be considered is one of motivation. When a new free software project is started what is the motivation behind those concerned? Is it simply a case of being interested in the inner workings of some technique or technology and the desire to explore that? Is it the case of necessity being the mother of invention, i.e. someone writes a program to do something for himself and is simply kind enough to lets other have the use of it? Is it the case of wanting to be recognised as a true craftsmen by doing something really well? Only the last of these can compete with the motivation of increased sales that makes those who write software in the course of a business pay attention to making the software truly user friendly.
Finally we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Many pieces of commercial software sacrifice flexibility for ease of operation. How do we make software simple and easy to use in it's default configuration but also flexible for those who know how to make use of the flexibility?
Steve.