Examining Some Open Source Myths

Neil Gunton writes "I wrote an article distilling some thoughts on Open Source myths. Perhaps unusually, these are not myths propogated by the anti-OSS crowd, but rather dogma that is more frequently spouted by OSS proponents. It is not intended as an anti-OSS argument, but really more as observations and reactions to specific things people say without really thinking about it, such as 'You shouldn't complain about it if you don't want to put effort into providing a fix', 'OSS lets you get under the hood to fix problems', 'All software should be free', 'Scratching the personal itch', etc."

A fair treatment, but I still disagree

On "All Software Should be Free"
Carpentry is a bad analogy. No one says that I should be able to take tables made by carpenters for free. However, the effects of idea creation are much more ephemeral. Or rather, they are much easier to duplicate than a well crafted table. This is exactly why analogies to "stealing" items in the real world do not carry over to the internet. I don't believe in copyright, any of it. But I still think things should have value. I just don't think that the government should grant monopolies on any idea. So, to go back to the analogy, I think you should be able to charge for what you make, be it software or tables. But I also think that the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own, and give it away or sell it or whatever. So comparing the internet to the real world we see that copyrights are just a legal entity, they are not real things, they do not exist outside of a goverment's promise to enforce them. So you can tables, CDs, and even bandwidth, but you can't steal information.

So, let's take this point and compare it with the previous point made concerning "scratching an itch". People in many professions get paid for their expertise. A plumber comes in, does his job, gets paid, and goes home. He doesn't make royalties on his work. He enjoys no monopoly on information, but of course, his job makes this unnecessary. But what we see from the case of the plumber is that people will still need software written, even if there are no monopolistic copyright protections when it is written. People will have "itches", and they will need to be scratched. And maybe they won't have the time to do it themselves. And so, others will be paid to scratch that itch. All of this takes place without any mention of copyright. It's not needed.

I didn't think so

I didn't get the idea that he is complaining. I think there is a valid point there. Why is it that every successful Open Source project, that is also targeted to the End-User market (and not the server/developer market) is backed directly by a company with money to spare?

OpenOffice (Sun), Mozilla (Netscape/AOL). As the author pointed out... The Gnu Image Manipulation Project doesn't have the end-user market share (yet I would also point out that this "End-User" project is the result of 'developer', not end-user, tools).

Programmers are a commodity, good developers are not. For every 100 programmers, you'll find 1 developer that has a good idea. After hearing the idea, 95 of those programmers will say, oh, yeah - that sounds obvious (yet, they had not thought of it). That's the crux. You have 95 commodity programmers who are willing to give away 1 developers good idea, because - in hind sight - it seems obvious. Maybe a general or interesting application is actually a new idea. I'll admit that this isn't always the case, but this does happen. THAT is why copyright exists, the idea has value. ...There are underlying social reasons for this as well that I'll be happy to get into.

Further, I don't think it's bemoaning to point out that in the 80s (and much of the early 90s) the software industry was still open to the single developer, and also not hobbled by open source efforts. This was also before massive consolidation of the software industry. Seems to me, just a simple statement of fact.

Re:I didn't think so

We can believe him. Unfortunately all his article brings are the downsides, and these are from the providers point of view, the software authors, and he frames it as some "mysterious outside force", when in fact its simply other software authors who instead see a benefit or a reason to do what they do, release free software.

So essentially what we have is the free software authors undercutting the shareware or paid software authors. So while he disguises his argument as "a problem caused by open source", in reality, he has just been undercut by competition.

Now of course, we could then follow with the argument of "dumping" as an unfair competitive strategy, but to prosecute this would be to eliminate the free distribution of software. I'm just not comfortable with that notion.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"

There is a confusion between free and cheap.
It is cheap and easy to have an opinion on cheap software. Not that it will do much good.
It can be very expensive to have an opinion (that anybody will listen to) on free software.

Assuming that much of the future of IT is in supply chain:
A chain with only two links is kinda silly.
A chain is as strong as its weakest link, which has the uncomfortable consequence that the most important links are the weakest links.
This forces some strange-looking economics. Old Red Hat is now expensive and new Fedora can't be bought.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

What's your opinion on karma-whoring trolls, who copy/paste someone else's posts hoping to get modded-up?

I think they should be mass-sued for copyright infringement, found guilty and thrown in jail.

Oh, or maybe they should simply be down-modded and hailed with derisive laughter?

Hm. A self-regulating, dynamic and free post market economy or a government-imposed regulatory system that's impossible to enforce? Decisions, decisions...

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

I don't believe in copyright, any of it. But I still think things should have value. I just don't think that the government should grant monopolies on any idea.

I could be misunderstanding you, but it seems that you misunderstand copyright. Copyright protects not an idea but an expression of an idea. Taking the kind of area where copyright originated: the idea of a series which tracks a wizard boy through school as he fights baddies has no doubt been expressed many times, but the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series is protected.

So, to go back to the analogy, I think you should be able to charge for what you make, be it software or tables. But I also think that the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own, and give it away or sell it or whatever.

To continue with the HP example, would Rowling have spent years writing and polishing the HP books if the first publisher she approached with the manuscript could rip it off and make all the profit? Maybe she would have written the first one or two, but seeing others getting fat on her work while she got nothing would have been a strong disincentive against finishing the series.

Application to software, then: if a company spends thousands or millions of $CURRENCY developing a product, and then the first person they sell it to can make as many copies as they want and sell them on for half the price, that person will make more profit per copy, because they didn't have the overheads, and will sell more copies to boot. The only way to avoid this is to sell it to that person for the price of developing, which means that there will only be incentive for a company to write software if it's in-house or built-to-order. There goes company innovation.

If when you say

the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own

you mean that they should be able to make a clean-room implementation and sell it, then that's fair. However, copyright protection doesn't prevent that, so it's not an argument against copyright.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

I disagree. While software has not been seen as a service until recently, I believe it has more potential for good as a service industry than it ever did as a product industry.

When producing a product, it is necessary to predict what will sell on the open market for the best margin. This is not always the item most needed. It is not always produced by the best programmers. The product and its quality are determined by groups of individuals interested solely in maximizing the bottom line.

As a service, software would be produced when needed, to meet known requirements planned out in advance. The best team of programmers available will be chosen (for the money those interested are willing to offer -- and they are the ones to choose the cost, since they are the ones needing the software). There are very few "failed products" because the predictions are no longer necessary. In short, the process becomes far more efficient, and the developers end up making money in roughly direct proportion to the quality of their code (and general software development methods, such as staying on schedule) rather than the competence of their marketing department.

OSS is a service "industry". Software is developed, for the most part, because someone wanted it. There was a need for it. Generally, they chose to spend time rather than money to have it developed, having already the necessary skills to develop it themselves or a willingness to learn. They did not worry about what would sell well, or what the market wanted, because those did not matter. The need existed, and they chose to fulfill it. And while many an OSS project did not "succeed" in the market, nearly all accomplished the purposes for which they were written.

The software industry is one of a very few that does /not/ market a service. Even most manufactured products are produced only when ordered -- a request for service. The only difference is that in manufacturing, most of the cost over the lifetime of a product line is in mass production, and can be amortized to the cost per item. In software development, the vast majority of the cost is in the development, which indicates to me that the payment should be for the original development and not for the copies. Once the software has been developed, most often for a corporation but possibly under government contract or for a consumer organization, it could then become public, to be used by anyone.

The software doesn't have to become OSS, of course; it can be held under trade secret (contract law) if the company does not wish the resulting code to be used by its competitors. But in the case, it would be under a service model anyway -- with one copy, there is no difference.

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

I'll takle an EASY target: "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"

He claims that it's hard and that nobody does it "in the real world." If that was really the case, the open source world we have today would not exist. Linux would not exist. BSD would not exist. Apache would not exist. PHP would not exist. MySQL would not exist. But they do. They are all thriving projects with thousands of contributors. Does EVERYONE contribute? No, but they don't need to. Not everyone HAS the skills, but not everyone needs to have the skills. That's why (if you were a corporation) you hire people with those skills to support the systems you use.

I know that I personally have fixed bugs in dozens of FOSS applications, and greatly exteneded functionality in dozens as well. It's not that you MUST get "under the hood and fix problems," it's that you CAN. This is not a myth. It's an indisputable fact. Any competent programmer can work with FOSS software. Not all programmers are competent. Not all people are programmers. These facts don't change the base fact.

under the hood

He claims that it's hard and that nobody does it "in the real world."

No, he doesn't. Direct quote from the article: "But how many people actually do this? Hardly anybody in real life." There's a BIG difference between "nobody" and "hardly anybody".

Re:under the hood

." There's a BIG difference between "nobody" and "hardly anybody".

Heh; yeah, and it's often the difference between proprietary and open source.

I've also contributed code to a number of open-source projects. And in many cases, my work was triggered by reading a complaint from a user. I'd have the response "Hey, that's bothered me, too, and it looks like I'm not the only one. I wonder how hard it would be to fix? ..."

Then, usually far too many hours later, I announce that I've got a patch that fixes the problem, and people should try it out. Or if it's simple enough, I just send in the patch in, it gets included in the next alpha/beta release, and I can reply to the original users complain saying that there's a fix in the archive for them to try.

With closed software, I couldn't have done this. If the code maintainers aren't following the same lists and groups as I am, they probably never notice the complaints. Or they are under pressure from their management to implement only the changes requested by Sales.

It isn't important that everyone hack the source code. What's important is that open source allows a significantly-larger crowd of programmers to hack the code. And it usually turns out that those programmers are users of the code themselves. This often makes them more responsive to user complaints than commercial developers, who usually only answer to their superiors (and are often intentionally kept out of direct contact with users).

And if the code's maintainers aren't responsive enough, open source allows you to do a fork. I've been involved in this, too. With closed source, it's only possible with permission of the original group. With open source, you sometimes (though rarely) get a fork that's more useful than the original. Or, more often, it's useful to a set of users that wouldn't have ever become users of the original.

Free Software

You seem to be making the misconception that "free software" means "gratis software" - this is incorrect.

"Free Software" refers to freedom, not price. I can sell my piece of free software at any price I like, whether you choose to buy it of course, is your own freedom.

For example; a business selling a database product may choose to release it as free software, and offer a gratis download, but offer a support/maintainance license for a fee. The software is still free, and the money from support /maintainance licenses can pay for things like offices, developers, food, water, bills, etc :)

Re:Free Software

You seem to be making the misconception that "free software" means "gratis software" - this is incorrect.

"Free Software" refers to freedom, not price. I can sell my piece of free software at any price I like, whether you choose to buy it of course, is your own freedom.

I think he hit th enail on the head - how many times do you see someone looking for an OSS aka "free" counterpart to a CSS aka "cost money" product? They're looking for free as in no cost, not as in I can mod it. That perception will limit entry and ultimately stifle innovation. How many innovative, vs "let's copy the functionality of product X" OSs programs are out there?

For example; a business selling a database product may choose to release it as free software, and offer a gratis download, but offer a support/maintainance license for a fee. The software is still free, and the money from support /maintainance licenses can pay for things like offices, developers, food, water, bills, etc :)

Well, beyond the hurdle that someone has to develop OSS programs so you can sell maintenance is the cost of support issue.

If your selling support, It'll be cheaper to hire a bunch of cheap offshore techies to answer phones and provide support. Keep a few US based staff to do installs (supplement them with off shore progarmers on a limited entry basis) and you have a model for making money on maintenance.

Just don't plan on being a high paid US programmer when equally good talent is cheaper elsewhere.

It's not theat OSS is a bad model, but it is a bit self limiting.

Re:Free Software

> whether you choose to buy it of course, is your own freedom.

You'll never get a job at Microsoft with that attitude.

Re:Free Software

Just one minor nit: If you distribute your binaries and source together, then there is no obligation on you to distribute source to any Tom, Dick, and Harry. They will have to either get the complete package from you or deal with someone who did. The clause 2/3 distribution only comes into play if you distribute the binaries without source.

While it is certainly true that the GPL provide a fairly effectively means to prevent prices from getting unrealistic, it does not prevent you from selling software. Imagine a company that build a piece of software. They then choose to distribute it under the GPL, set up websites/ftp/mailinglists etc., demand a small fee for the download, make sure that paying customers allways get source, and make upgrades easy and frequent (and worhtwhile).
To "rip off" (as in fork the project and become the "official" version) the code from such a project, you would need to provide enough of the infrastructure that the original company provides, keep people interested in your version, and merge any "good" changes (while keeping in mind that you need to pay for each new version (the GPL does not gaurantee you future binaries, and you only get source to the binaries you have)) the original developers make.
Now if the company is charging too much for this service the competing free effort is likely to succed, but I believe that it is possible to hit a pricepoint, where it is more profitable (for the end user) to pay a small subscription/fee than to fork the project (and under the GPL any forks could be merged back in if they pop up and develop something useful). Not that it is easy, but it should be possible.

Uh Oh!

A discussion where bashing the soft points of OSS doesn't get modded -1 Troll.

I can see the next article: "Understanding the GNAA"

My thoughts.

Many of this guy's comments are very good. In many ways, the programing industry is being hit by a much more general sweep of what I call 'copyright depreciation'. The really huge piracy with games, music and movies at the moment is a symptom of copyright depreciation and so is programing. I think a key cultural change in this century will be the rise in the difficulty of the ability to make money off copyrighted works.

In the past, a company could assemble a team of programmers and pay them to write a program for you. Really, the only way you could assemble such a team was under this structure. With the invention of the internet such teams can be assembled on-line and can work in their spare time. Couple this with the ability to be able to duplicate en mass for effectively zero cost makes this form of development very effective.

In the end, the programmer has to get paid or they can't make a living off it. What we're seeing is the destruction of huge profit margins and the market force establishing the 'true' value of a programmer.

Simon

Re:My thoughts.

I don't think you can compare programming with music and movies. Music and movies are both entertainment products and people's demand for them is generally fairly constant.

Programming, on the other hand, can be divided into two categories: games, and just about everything else. Games are entertainment products, and thus follow a similar pattern to music and movies, with the exception that they sell less because, being interactive, they offer a greater range of entertainment experience per product.

But applications are the really nasty area. Because there, almost all of the standard applications are already written, and even if the written ones aren't ideal, the network effect is so strong that they can't be toppled. Original applications are generally frozen out of the market to begin with.

So yes, he's right to say "software can't make money". Applications software indeed can't make money anymore - because 90% of the time, it's either competing against a rock-crushing market leader, or (worse) competing against something the consumer already got for free because it was bundled with their PC. In that situation, no price higher than zero can possibly survive.

Huh? Who made that claim?

Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements.

That's news to me. I always regarded Windows to be ahead until w2k, and then the Linux apps quickly got their shit together. Since, they are more or less equal. Now, there's another system that kicks both their asses, MacOS X. That is to say, it kicks Linux' ass, but afterwards, it comforts Linux and give gentle hints on how to improve (Safari -> KHTML (or whatever)).

Re:Huh? Who made that claim?

I think the problem is that you, me, and most other tech savvy people want Linux on the Desktop; but, not just ours - everyones.

In order to do this, Linux distributions need to be dumbed down. I'm sorry, but if we want Desktop supremacy too, we need to make a distro that assumes the end-user is a complete moron when it comes to computers. Why? Because the average user thinks of the computer as an appliance. This is never going to change, no matter how hard you will it.

As much as you or I love to tinker with the technology behind it, the average Joe doesn't have the time, the will, or sometimes the brains to sit down and figure out what damned conf file needs to be edited in /etc/, or what obscure net driver he needs for his internal VIA network adapter. He also doesn't want to worry about his IP address, subnet mask, DNS servers and his gateway ("Gateway? Isn't that a computer brand?"). And, he sure as hell doesn't want to put up with attempting to install Linux drivers for his cool graphics card, only to have to find the X config file and change something.

Speaking of the X-conf and dumbing things down: Windows automatically detects, and uses, the scroll wheel. To this day, I have a difficult time setting up my damn window manager to recognize the scroll wheel. A small thing, yes, but I have to admit, Windows does a wonderful job of just "making it work."

As far as out of the box useability, I have yet to see a distro that hands down beats Windows.

So, I guess what I'm saying is: I agree with the article on this one, because the article is, from my perspective, not geared twards you, or me - the tech savvy system administrators - it's geared twards arguments from the average user - the guy who isn't going to run Apache, or MySQLd, or write bash scripts, or setup his computer as a firewall, or buy a new computer to run MacOS X.

For the average user, Windows still kicks Linuxs (Linux's? Linuxii?) ass, because it does the hand holding that the Distros treat worse than the devil.

Re:One of these is my personal favourite

"Now imagine what a phenomenal product GIMP would be in the eyes of graphic artists who now use photoshop if only the people who had complained about it could be bothered to FIX what they see as problems. A few small years worth of effort in total, very little from each person who has seen something wrong, and the free tool would have surpassed the proprietary one years ago. Instead, all we get are more complaints."

This is of course exactly the kind of idiocy the author of the article was complaining about. Imagine if, on the other hand the GIMP programmers weren't just working to scratch their own itch.

They'd accept user's complaints as a legitimate roadmap to the areas in which they are failing to satisfy their user base, and do something about it, and respond positively by addressing the complaint personally, or as a team by attempting to entice someone with the neccessary skills to do the fixing.

Imagine what a phenomenal product GIMP would be if the authors were prepared to attempt to resolve all complaints by managing users complaints as they would a technical issue.

Just a few years of attempting to address all complaints, not just scratching the itch of the core programming team, and the free tool would surpass the proprietary one, by being responsive to the user rather than bound by cost/benefit analysis like commercial software vendors.

Of course, this assumes that the users complaints are actually legitimate and substantive complaints and not just assinine and meaningless twaddle, which to me is no better or worse than you seemingly assuming that all users are coders whose work is of a suitable standard that it would be accepted by a mature open source project. :)

We generalize too much

I think one problem with discussing open source software is we often pretend everyone involved has the same objectives. The scratching a personal itch comment is a case in point. Sure, for some developers, that is all it is. For others, the motivation might be quite different. Some projects are receiving donations with the understanding that the key developers will produce specific features; some developers want to showcase their skills; and so on.

Rather than talking about OSS as a whole, we need to try (as far as possible) to discuss the motives of individuals or the objectives of specific projects.

Re:Astroturfing or another troll ?

2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)

Er, no. The point he was making was that just because you "can" get under the hood of free software doesn't mean that you can really do anything worthwhile.

For instance, if I find a bug in some massive application like Eclipse, sure I can get the source and "get under the hood", but for all intents and purposes I really can't because the source tree is so huge and complicated that I have about as good an understanding how the program works with the source as I do without it.

So realistically, unless the source code is very simple and the problem to fix is a trivial one, just having the source doesn't really help you very much unless you intend on devoting a large amount of time to fixing the program.

Having more choice doesn't prevent you from having a choice pre selected for you.

You sure wouldn't know it reading Slashdot! It seems like the prevailing attitude among the free software zealots here is that the worst possible thing that could happen is to get a Linux CD with only one of every kind of application on it.

Re:Astroturfing or another troll ?

1. If developers have no time to waste, they should simply ignore them, instead of starting flamewars or simply honestly state that they lack the time to implement this or that feature. Beside that, many people who are 'whining' are often criticising important failures of a project, sure they may have not used the perfectly gentle right words, but that doesn't make them less right.

2. He is arguing from a practical point of view, not from a theoretical. For most people going under the hood of Open Source software is as realistic as climbing the Mount Everest, sure they could do it, but they neigher have the knowledge or the time to actually do it.

3. Again he is talking from a practical point of view, not a theoretical one. Sure you can sell Open Source software, but how many people are actually doing it, especially if you leave the 'just boundle up a bunch of OSS written by other people' aka distros people? Actually very very few compared to the ones writing them. And even of those who make a bit of money with it, how many make actually enough money to make a living from it?

4. Well, people are often overestimating the quality of a OSS product, but well, that happens more out of the fan boy camp, than out of the developer camp. Just count how many times you have heard that Gimp is a Photoshop killer, while in reality its far far behind Photoshop.

5. Well, maybe no myth there, it just states that 'scratch an itch' doesn't really lead to any software that end-users are interested in.

6. More choice is NOT always good. Are you happy that there are so many fileformats and everything is incompatible with each other? Wouldn't a bit less choice and more standards actually be a good thing? How about one good and polished configuration tool for linux that works, instead of dozens of hacks from the distro makers that all more or less don't work?

A bit choice isn't bad, sure, but in the linux world it quite often turns out that instead of one working tool, you get half a dozens of unfinished not much working once. Just having 'More' isn't better, quality of the software itself matters.

7. Far from it, it states pretty well how Open Source looks from a practical point of view, not from a theoretical one.

Re:Astroturfing or another troll ?

1 : Red Herring. People who receive this treatment are generally whining or complaining. That's a way to shrug them off, because developers have no time to waste with such people. People who want to help post on bugzilla, explain to the author, tell him about the problem, without feeling compelled to say that the product "sucks".

That's certainly the case sometimes, but not always. Several times I've gotten the "You want it, you write it" reply when requesting new features, like supporting a database other than MySQL. If the developers would reply "I just don't have time to add this feature, I have to focus on supporting the stuff most people have or prefer," that's fine. I understand that many people are doing these projects in their free time. But many developers, in my experience, get extremely huffy when you suggest that something could be done better a different way. They take it as a personal attack. Then usually they get on their high horses about "You wouldn't have anything if not for me, and you'll get what features I want and you'll damn well like it."

It's hardly unique to the OSS world, as it's a human failing. I think it's mainly that, in the OSS world, you have more direct access to the actual developers, and because they write their programs for free they tend to identify more with them. So any complaint about the program is interpreted, by the developer in this case, as an attack on the developer himself. Probably Bill Gates feels the same way when we talk shit about Windows (or Microsoft), believe it or not. I don't think anyone doubts he has a big emotional attachment to his company and its flagship products.

2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)

He doesn't say that it doesn't allow you. He says that, in practice, most projects are sufficiently complex that most people are unable to. There's always a big startup cost involved in learning a new program. The bigger the program, the biggest the cost. While compartmentalization using libraries in such will help reduce this, if you don't know the libraries either, you're still looking at a big expenditure of time. And most of us have jobs and other priorities.

So it's not that you can't dig in and modify the code. It's that 99.995% of Linux users lack either the ability or time to do so. The "You can modify the source, so it's better" argument isn't wrong; it's just misleading.

3 : classic misunderstandig. We're talking about freedom here, not gratis. Stupid really, as all he says is then offtopic.

No, the misunderstanding is on your end. He explicitly mentions the classic example of how to make money off free (as in speech) software: services. He also points out, quite correctly, that there's no way for an individual or small group to make any money off this. If you and a buddy write some great app, how on earth are you going to make money off it? A tiny company hasn't got the resources to provide "services" the way IBM or RedHat can.

I mean, think of all those shareware games that the Mac people keep trotting out as examples that gaming on their platform doesn't suck. Those people wouldn't be able to make those games if they were open source. The market for services is too small, and even if there were one, the developers wouldn't have the manpower to provide it.

4 : I've never heard this one. Clearly, nobody sane would state that. Perhaps he forgot the word "often" in the sentence.

He's discussing myths, after all. If he said "often," then it wouldn't be a myth.

On #5, we agree.

6 : Even if people choose for you, more choice is always better (think monopoly). Even more stupid. Having more choice doesn't preven

Open Source User = Cares About Software

The OSS methodology does not need such rigid definition or clarification.

The only reason to run OSS software is because you care about the software that you run and are expected to use on a day-to-day basis. This is for the following reasons:

1. You don't want to be locked into a particular vendor's proprietary protocols, data formats, etc.

2. You want full control of your system. Why should you waste system overhead running a GUI, for example, on a system you just need to be a web server? You get that level of choice with OSS.

3. You want to feel part of a community. Unlike commercial software, you cannot expect the software programmer to bring what you want straight to you in a format you want - it just doesn't work that way because there is no marketing of OSS software. You have to be prepared to feed likes and dislikes back to the programmer or team who created the software.

4. You don't want to / can't pay for software. This is different to saying "All software should be free" and I'm all for voluntary donations to OSS projects. But it does mean that you can turn old hardware into a working usable system and in poorer countries, where people do not have the income to pay for software, this allows them to have exposure to the Internet, programming and gaining computer skills.

5. You don't support piracy. This follows on from 4. above but surely it's better for everyone to have people paying for commercial software and not using illegal copies while those that won't pay for software just use free software instead.

Open source version

I find this assertion interesting:

But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free.

For a long time it was hard to get backing for software development on the PC because of the "Microsoft version" - the idea that if your idea was successful, MS would include it in the next version of Windows, undermining your market. Now, are we going to see that it's hard to get funding because someone will write a free version?

Whether or not they will, or whether it will be any good, isn't really relevant. I doubt that GIMP has hurt Photoshop's sales much, or MySQL is making a dent in Oracle. It's the perception in the mind of VCs and investors that matters.

Well written article

And I think it has many interesting points that are worth thinking about and/or taking to heart.

But, I have a critique of point 3 (All software should be free) and an observation about point 5 (Scratching the personal itch).

First, there is profitable Open Source software out there. The biggest example I can think of is LiveJournal [livejournal.com]. Sure, what LJ sells is premium features for their site, but they wouldn't have a thing to sell without their software, which they've wisely chosen to Open Source. LJ makes enough money to afford some pretty hefty server farms in back of it. There are many clone sites out there that use their software, and are free to make money in the same way, but none of them have come even close to putting LJ out of business yet. In fact, I think they've just strengthened LJs business.

So, software can be free, and still make money.

In point 5, Neil Gunton cogently observes in the last sentence "A commercial company, on the other hand, can afford to scratch the personal itches of its end-users, because the end-users are the ones paying the bills.". This very true, and I think it provides a useful illustration of a means by which an Open Source company can make money by directly selling software.

I think I ought to be able to go into a store and bu a copy of gimp. In fact, I think there are several Open Source packages which would lend themselves well to being sold seperately from distributions. This would do a lot to raise the visibility of these packages from a consumer perspective.

I just answered a question by someone where they were wondering about Open Source packages for doing various things. I gave them a list of them. But every single one of those packages usually comes with a distribution. This person was totally unaware of this.

These packages need marketing and distribution seperately from the OS. That marketing and distribution would raise their profiles, and provide a valuable way for end-users to get involved in how a package is produced. Their money would pay for support. They could be introduced to the concept of Open Source and how to effectively contribute constructive criticism and development money for their pet features to Open Source projects. The distribution company could provide a focal point for this, and a project could put things up on its homepage about how well it was being served by various distribution companies.

This would both generate revenue for Open Source projects, adressing point 1. And it would provide direct consumer involvement that could drive feature development, addressing point 5.

If I ever make consumer oriented Open Source software, I intend to sell it on my webpage, and not provide it for free download. I will tell them that if they can't afford the download, they should get a copy from their friends. I will provide source with the download. If someone wants to grab my source and try to compete with me in selling it under a different name, they're welcome to try, but I'm fairly confident that I can continue to add value to this software that I originally wrote better than anybody else, and they will eventually decide to rejoin my project anyway.

Debunking the Myths from "Open Source Myths"

I'm assuming the author posted his essay and pointed Slashdot to it in the interests of getting comments. Well, here are mine:

"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"

IMPE (In My Personal Experience), this statement is rarely the first thing out of the developers' mouths. It's mostly used when firing back at those who try demanding certain features be put into the projects. Anybody has the right to comment and criticize, and the open source developer community probably handles that as well as any audience does for that type of comment. However, nobody can demand things be done unless they're paying for it or they're doing it themselves.

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"

Does a casual user do this? Probably not. Does this mean that no user does this? Of course not. It's mostly a matter of how much import you put on the fix and getting it soon. And in terms of the complexity...that depends on the project. Like the essay author, I am "an experienced developer" and I've already helped fix bugs in rsnapshot (small Perl script) and as an experiment rewrote part of the TightVNC Java client to use as a Swing component instead of an applet (not huge, but not exactly simple, either.)

"All software should be free"

or more specifically:

One of the central tenets of the Open Source philosophy (as it seems to be understood by the average person, at any rate) is that all software should be free.

No, that's one of the central tenets of the Free Software movement, which is approximately a subset of the Open Source movement. And their concern is "free as in speech" more so than "free as in beer", which is more of a side effect. Yes, this philosophy, if carried to its practical conclusion, means no more shrinkwrapped commercial software. Just like the existence of Habitat for Humanity, if carried to its extreme, means no more business for home builders ("free as in siding"? ;-). But it doesn't eliminate the market for home improvement stores (e.g., Home Depot), as homeowners still have to "scratch their own itch" and fix things around the house. It therefore similarly does not get rid of the markets for lumber, bricks, shingles, nails, power tools, etc.

"Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"

Actually, I agree here -- anyone who says that literally is nuts. If you put "All else being equal" on the front, then the statement is fairly decent, but rarely is all else equal, meaning a project's open source nature is one of many features, each with their own weight in the eyes of the decision-maker.

"Scratching the personal itch"

The author admits that this is true in the first sentence of his argument. If it ain't a myth, don't list it as a myth -- it hurts the essay overall.

"More choice is always better"

Like with the proprietary "myth" above, as a literal statement, this probably isn't a great statement. With "all else being equal" on the front, it is. Certainly, the inverse -- less choice is always better -- or the contrapositive -- more choice is never better -- are even worse statements, so the "myth" ain't so bad in comparison. (and forgive me if I got my inverse and contrapositive mixed up, as it's been a long time since I covered that in middle school).

Some myths are bigger than others...

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
How is this a myth? Nothing prevents me from doing it, whether I want to is my choice. And those that do are always going to be in the minority.

"All software should be free"
Aaaagh. How many times do we have to reiterate it, not as in beer? Another "software is manufacture" argument.

"Scratching the personal itch"
So the desire to rule out leeching wasn't a valid itch in the case of bittorrent. Or the wish for a fast uncomplicated window manager made blackbox the choice of only programmers. My particular itch [sourceforge.net] has nothing to do with programming. This might have made sense maybe five years ago, now it's laughably easy to shoot down.

"More choice is always better"
This is a bad way to put it. "A bunch of bad choices is worse than a few good ones" is a better argument, and has much better application to software.

This was lazily written and needed more thought before /. got hold of it. Bad move :)

I rather hate this literary form

Most of the time, a list of myths provides little more than an opportunity to trot out a consignment of straw men-- willful distortions of the opponent's arguments, to be hacked, burnt, and slashed at for the the audience's amusement.

Author is confused

Responses to the points:

"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"

Agree. (i.e, agree with the author's disagreement to this statement). However, the statement is generally only aimed at someone who simply flames developers without offering anything constructive, in which case its valid.

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems".

That statement is aimed at companies, not home users. Know why gimp is popular in hollywood, despite competing proprietary software having a lot more features? That's right, studios can (and do) pay dozens of programmers, and with gimp they get the source.

"All software should be free"

Hello? That's RMS's philosophy, and maybe the philosophy of the Free Software movement. The "open source" movement differs from RMS on precisely this point. Author's long rant about this is completely wasted, because it is a minority of FS/OSS proponents who believe that all software should be free.

"Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"

Find me 5 people who believe that.

"Scratching the personal itch"

Well, that's the explanation of how unpaid OSS gets written. Commercial OSS is a whole different thing. I don't think anyone confuses the two. The author assumes that people do, and then goes on to explain why they shouldn't. Duh.

"More choice is always better"

Yes and no. That's why we have distros. If you are a linux vendor, more choice is always better. The vendors pick and choose and put together a coherent product so that the end user needs to make one choice (which distro to use) and nothing more. They get a usable system right away. If the end user wants to choose, they can, that's why you have debian, gentoo etc.

Conclusion: these statements aren't myths at all, except in the author's mind, or have important caveats which the author ignores.

Freedom to Fix

The article is biased because it, seemingly deliberately, omits crucial parts of the discussion. For instance:
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"

The author says that the idea that OSS allows you to tinker with the source code is a "myth". He is totally missing the point; The freedom to fix the software is important, not because every user will be able to do so, but because they will all ultimately benefit from this access being available to the programmers that will submit patches.

- Brian.

Someone got bored halfway through...

"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"

Personally I've never heard this one, although I've fixed quite a few things, then submitted the necessary as it kills that one dead.

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems" - Maybe you'll poke around a bit in the code, and if it's trivial then you can fix it - but again, this really isn't something your average user is going to do.

Look! Over there, other side of the road, travelling in the other direction...it's the point...

The point of this 'myth' is you have the ability to. That's it. Whether you submit the patches or not, you can make any modifications that your little heart desires.

"All software should be free" - I write something independently, then there is basically not a chance in hell of being able to sell it or make money directly from it.

There is money being made, but I think the point is that all software should be free in terms of usage rather than monetary cost. Frequent mistake, but a schoolboy error for someone with 20 years experience.

"As a developer myself, this prospect is profoundly depressing"

Why the hell should it? I'm currently developing like there's no tomorrow; people pay for my ability to make things work how they want them to, they don't care about which tools I use. You don't stand over your plumber's shoulder and demand he uses branded Stilsons; you'd get one in the mouth after a short amount of time.

"Yeah, I know, some will say "Go ahead and try, it's a free world". But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free."

Unlike the corporation that could also do the same thing and just slightly undercut you? Grow up. Competition means going out there and seeing if your product/service will fly, and the capitalist ideal means that you could find yourself competing against an eight-year old wunderkind. On a long enough timescale kids will always kick your ass.

"the Linux desktop"

'The'?

"Some of these benefits include having a more focused direction for the team, given the fact that there is (usually) just one manager and team leader, firmer schedules and deadlines, tighter management, profit incentives, salaries and bonus motivations. While this can also be true for open source projects, the "design by committee" that goes on with community projects often results in a more bloated and less focused product that tries to be all things to all people."

Have you worked in a closed source environment? For one thing the manager generally doesn't code, the bonus motivations are usually in place to sweeten the complete lack of innovation and flair that are endemic to a heavily specified job and the deadlines usually slide for whatever reason. OTOH, you'll find that most of the _successful_ OSS projects actively try to cut down on the 'committee' element to the extent where someone usually throws their toys on the floor. Same shit, just slightly more transparent and vocal when it happens.

"A commercial company, on the other hand, can afford to scratch the personal itches of its end-users"

If it listens. Experience has shown that frequently features are thought of as more important than fixing problems, which has led to the current bloat cycle that usually results in the various companies talking about thin-clients...until they bloat the client again.

"Some people will inevitably condemn me for putting down Open Source"

Personally I'm disappointed that you appear to have such a narrow viewpoint. Your major concerns appear to be your own inertia, a couchlock attitude when faced with the idea that you can no longer simply code a product and leave it, that you may be faced with competition and that convienience should be paramount

Making Money off Software?

I like his points, but I'm not sure I agree with point #3. I'm not a programmer, but a lot of my fellow consultants make pretty good money off bespoke software for clients. It _is_ related to the point the author makes, regarding "I have some cool ideas, how do I make money off it?" insofar as a lot of people focus on a particular area for development (web services, smart card interfaces, mobile applications, whatever.)

Customers, especially large firms, don't buy that software, but they will hire a consultant to help them by writing an application that plugs a certain gap, period. The "sale" is the money they pay you for your time.

No, you probably won't get to release that application to the public under the GPL, but you may very well obtain future business based on reference projects, business which involves writing similar applications for different projects.

What I don't see nearly enough for my tastes is a "middle of the road", use-whatever-works-best approach in choosing or writing software. We live in the real world and gotta solve problems; if you have the time and energy to devote to writing programs idealistically, I salute you, honestly. If you don't, considering for example that you have to make things work for a client, or simply don't have the resources for it, nobody should give you s*** for it.

It WILL be free - like it or not

I have no problem with people using copyright to charge for their software - it seems to me both parties get something from the deal. But it has to happen in a free market, and in the free market the price of information has fallen and can't get up. [shirky.com]

As Shirky says: The price of information has not only gone into free fall in the last few years, it is still in free fall now, it will continue to fall long before it hits bottom, and when it does whole categories of currently lucrative businesses will be either transfigured unrecognizably or completely wiped out, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Nor should we. Industrialization wiped out the weavers' guilds, most of the farming population and the horse-cart manufacturers - and we're better off for it. The winds of change are blowing again. Let's tear down the windbreaks and build windmills instead.

Myths about Open Source myths.

1. This one understates the real problem. SOME open source developers may just as well be writing shareware. Naming no names, but I know at least one mail package that's completely closed to third party modifications... and I've run into other programs where the developers are nearly as hostile to patches.

2. This one, however, is no myth. The vast majority of open source software is very approachable, easy to get into and fix things. I'm no "super programmer" but I've submitted patches that have gone into programs from AMANDA to THTTPD... hmmm, I guess I better see what I can do about Zeroconf, I'm a few letters from the end of the alphabet.

Anyway, not "getting under the hood" is a choice. It's not hard and lets you scratch *your* itch.

3. There are many many people in the OSS movement who have no objection to closed source software. I was at Usenix when someone asked McKusick what he thought about someone "stealing" the TCP code from BSD to put it in closed source software. His response... he welcomed it. It meant better software all round.

4. You're assuming, again, that there's some basic conflict between the two approaches. Combine them, you get better software than either... there's hardly any significant proprietary system out there that isn't using OSS components. Apple is the obvious example, but Microsoft uses a lot of OSS in NT... they're even shipping a package containing GCC these days.

5. "Scratching the personal itch". Proprietary software publishers do that too. They talk about being "technically led" or "market led", but the result is the same... if their "personal itch" makes their software less usable or less secure, the user loses. Integrate browser and the desktop? User loses! Abandon GUI guidelines in favor of the New Metal Look? User loses!

What keeps them in check is competition, not any "market driven vision". And the same thing keeps OSS authors honest... PLUS with OSS you have a chance of getting into the source and scratching your itch as well in a way proprietary software can't equal.

6. "More choice is always better". You don't want to choose? That's a choice as well... and one you get to make. There's lots of prepackaged OSS-based systems that have someone's idea of what the "best choice" is.

7. Conclusion: it's not so simple. There isn't any one "Open Source" world, like there isn't any one "Proprietary world". Some OSS models are better than others. Some proprietary systems are better than others. Some OSS advocates have not-so-hidden agendas that you can learn to avoid... but most of those "myths" are simply a matter of your choosing *not* to take advantage of what OSS can offer you.

Give the man credit.

I thought the article was well thought out and the numerous people who are accusing him of confusing free as in beer and free as in libre are being unfair. The guy clear understands OSS, but if your software is libre then those you distribute it to can redistribute - meaning that you can't charge very much if anything for the code itself.

Of course you can charge for support etc. but the article explicitly discussed that. It annoys me (as someone who is considering a career as a developer) that people seem to be deliberately misconstruing what the man wrote.

The Myth of "Selling Support"

I've seen that idea recited for years now. Make Free Software, give it away, and make money by selling support. Well, this sounds great if you are developing software for the corporate enterprise, which is the predominant purchaser of support services. Most corporate IT groups won't even consider a particular software package UNLESS they can buy a support contract for it.

But what if you are a developer of desktop software, designed for home users or small business? By and large, those users don't buy support services. More importantly, if you are developing desktop software such as an organizer or an email program, it should be designed well enough that it doesn't require support.

How many home users would use a particular program that was free to download, but required paid support services because it was such a bitch to use and maintain?

The "Free Software, Paid Support" model simply breaks down at the desktop level. And as long as there is no profit incentive for developing Free desktop software, you will see that software continue to be developed by hobbyists in their spare time. And this certainly won't further the cause of Desktop Linux.

Just Replaces a Set of Overstatements with Another

The very title of the article shows that the author doesn't understand Open Source Software. Very few blanket statements will apply to all open source projects or developers. His blanket statements are no different.

"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
I've heard this, but it has been rare & is becoming more rare. In fact, I most often see it in conversations between two end users (and often on F/OSS for Windows). This can usually be seen as noise--in many cases the developers are quick to offer a much better reply, saying it is on the TODO, or offering short suggestions of how one might start to make a patch if they are so inclined. In other cases, complaints aren't expressed in the right forum--if this was the "last word," as the article's author states, it is often because no developers are able to read it. End users should be better educated how to voice their gripes & have something happen--search bugzilla (or a developer's mailing list) & if you seem to be the first one with the complaint, make it politely in what appears to be the correct forum for bug reports/feature requests!

"Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
Well-written ("maintainable" or, as ESR says, transparent and discoverable) and highly used Open Source Software almost always receive patches or plugins not written by the development team. The Linux Kernel Team might keep tight reigns on what they maintain, but there are plenty of kernel patches that find their way all the way into the vanilla kernel, or are at least popular enough to be found in non-vanilla kernels. Many, many, more can be applied by end users.

Diff/patch are proof to me that this really isn't a myth. You might not choose to fix or even look at someone else's code, but you usually can (and, importantly, others are likely to).

All software should be free
There's still a not-insignificant amount of contention on making more libre software & what that exactly means. See numerous licensing arguments of BSD vs. GPL, etc. As for making all software gratis, as the article implies, I don't really hear this too often. Most people in F/OSS are quick to point out that "Free" doesn't refer to "free beer" & will offer numerous F/OSS projects which are sold (a boxed linux distro, for example).

He doesn't really seem to understand the "Commoditization of Software." There are a few different types of applications & F/OSS has pursued most of them & certainly all of the popular ones. Sometimes development is unpaid. In other cases, commercial companies "who get it" or national labs/universities which receive public funding have done the authoring. The thing is that once that F/OSS alternative is out there, it will often develop into something people want to use & want to make better so that others will use it too.

Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software
Better in what way? No one really claims that GNU-CAD is yet at the level of commercial counterparts, but it is foolish to say it is impossible for them to get to that level. (I also disagree that Windows has a better GUI than *nix.) For popular projects, the development is usually always better--code gets fixed faster & the number of users often indicates that the "Return on Investment" is better enough that losing some things (compatibility with proprietary binaries often being the biggie) to be worth it.

Scratching the personal itch
The thing is that many developers are end-users as well. Evolution and Firefox are fine examples. It is also very likely that F/OSS will try to satisfy the end user needs--anyone can voice gripes about it. The thing is that many end users also happen to be developers. The other thing is that those who don't want to adopt F/OSS want a 1:1 replacement of the commercial software they've become locked-in to. Patents and some restrictive licenses ma

Fair and commonsense points

Kinda frustrating to see people ripping these commonsense points apart one by one. Really, these are all obvious and valid points. If you're all bent out of shape about them, even to the point where you need to rip the author on Slashdot, then you might just be part of the problem. Open Source is a simple and clean concept, but it is very secondary to good application design. "OSS" is not any kind of magic pill, and it certainly isn't an end unto itself.

(And personally, while I'm here, the number one most important tenet of open source should be SIMPLICITY. No one can safely modify code that isn't beautifully clean and understandable.)

What it takes to fix a bug in open source

• 1. Discover bug.
  2. Document bug.
  3. Report bug on bug reporting system on SourceForge.
  4. Wait a few days.
  5. Explore messages on project message board. Discover that the developers don't read the bug reporting system. Find appropriate Yahoo group they actually do read. Repost bug.
  6. Wait a few days.
  7. Get reply on message board: "Have you tried this in the beta release?"
  8. Set up CVS to talk to SourceForge. Get sources. Try to build program. Discover dependencies on specific versions of other projects. Get them.
  9. Wash, rinse, repeat.
  10. Try original problem in latest source. Verify problem.
  11. Reply to "Have you tried this in the beta release" with "yes".
  12. Wait a few days.
  13. Nothing happens.
  14. Wait some more.
  15. Nothing happens.
  16. Dig into code. Find defect. Fix defect. Verify that bug is gone.
  17. Run regression tests. Discover that regression tests show regression test errors. Run regression tests on released version. See same regression test errors. Read CVS comments to discover that regression tests haven't been updated to match source.
  18. Report fix on message board.
  19. Wait a few days.
  20. Nothing happens.
  21. Write on message board asking for source check-in permission.
  22. Get message that a major rewrite of that section is underway and the developers don't want changes to the old code in that area right now.
  23. Point out that developers haven't done a check-in on that section of code in three years.
  24. Get check-in permission.
  25. Check in fix. Rebuild. Rerun regression tests. Update README. Put message on message board about fix.
  26. Receive bug report from other user who was relying on the broken behavior.

  This is why you don't fix bugs in the programs of others.

The profit motive.

I think that there are inaccuracies on most of the statements made (not to the point that completely reverse the analysis, but the issues are more complex than they are being made) but point #3 is obviously the impetus behind Neil's questioning "Open Source Myths".

I have seen similar to this quite a bit: "I grew up in the 1980's assuming that I would one day be able to write some really cool software, then *SELL IT*, and make some real money for my trouble." I think that this is *not* a valid argument. While stating a personal opinion and emotional state quite clearly, one could say the same about the farmers who "expected to make a living on the farm" or factory workers who "expected to continue to make a living in the industry".

Efficiencies continue to increase in the world, displacing people from jobs, many times leaving them few good alternatives. Is this good? Surely it seems not to be for those displaced. Yet, few people today would want to be contrained by the living conditions of the early 1900's, or earlier. We live lives that the kings of old would have killed for, by standing on the broken backs of those displaced by efficiencies that were created by new technologies and methodologies. I myself would find it difficult to give up modern amenities while simultaneously understanding the concerns of outsourcing and open source. Hypocrite is one word for it, I guess. At the end of the day, I have decided that luxury trumps a living wage for my fellow man.

So how does this apply to OSS? Simply: we are outsourcing the development of potentially commercial work to *ourselves* and creating the infrastructure for software to be "worth less in dollars spent". If I build operating systems, web servers or databases, I'm pretty sure I would be feeling just like the farmers and factory workers of old: there is a pressure building that is not going to go away, which will sap the monetary reward for what I do.

Does this mean I am against OSS then? Surely not, for I realize that the end result of this change is software development is not the destruction of an industry, but the creation of a bedrock of new technologies and methodologies which will allow me to produce better and better solutions for my customers at lower and lower costs. I can't dream of writing the next "big word processor", but frankly that is an empty dream anyway with the established commercial vendors in place today. The only difference here with OSS is when a type of software reaches a certain threshold of maturity, commercial exploitation of that type of software becomes harder and harder as the OSS packages catch up.

The main difference with our industry is the *speed* at which the effects are felt: it took a generation to destroy the factory worker's job, it took several generations for the farms to be destroyed. We are seeing an industry created and destroyed in one lifetime. Myself, I'm glad I didn't get the opprotunity to get comfortable with the old model and had the chance to learn how to produce viable solutions for my customers using the new model. You see, for every dollar my clients don't spend on commercial operating systems, SQL servers, etc, there is a dollar available for me to apply honest work to solving the problems they are interested in having solved. Where OSS won't work, I'm more than willing to pay the commercial vendors for the parts and pieces I need: because in *those* cases they provided real value for my dollar.

"All software should be free" poor argument

The idea that "all software should be free" is clearly ridiculous in a world where most everything else has to be paid for, but this guy's argument against it is pretty poor. He says:

Some argue that there will always be a market for vertical market software (customized, very specific to a particular business), and this is true, but why can't I write a wonderful new *general* tool and make money from it? Yeah, I know, some will say "Go ahead and try, it's a free world". But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free.

If this guy wants to be an ISV because he has a really novel and profitable piece of software in mind, he's going to get considerably stiffer competition than "some kid in his parents' basement". If his software turns a decent profit he's going to be up against other businesses that will be happy to invest serious resources to build a product that makes people want to pay them instead. The kid in the basement can try to build something better, and if he's got the resources to do that on his own, he'll be tempted to go commercial too.

People release things open source because they know that they don't have the resources to produce something complex on their own and to an agressive timescale needed to get to market while the money is still there. The super-successful open source projects draw their resources from a large number of contributors and take a while to get going. If these projects could reach new and lucrative markets while there was still big money to be made in them, the temptation to go commercial would be too much for many.

Do not mistake useablity for learnability!

Useability is not the same as learnability, except for the case of a kiosk where nobody uses it twice.

True useability goes beyond grandma using the machine the first time, to grandma emailing the grandkids daily (weekly or however often). True useability may even go so far as to time how long it takes to press each key, and re-arranging the keyboard to save 1/10th of a second. (AT&T did this once for their operators, a case where spending a couple days in training saves money in the long run once they know the new layout the saves the thousands of seconds per person per month)

Linux is very useable if you are a programmer. KDE is very useable if you use your computer daily. And if you have never used a computer before KDE/gnome is just as useable as windows. (each has its own quirks though) If you are an expert at windows linux and the desktops are not as useable at first, if you take the effort to learn them they are at least as useable, perhaps more so depending on what you want to do with them.

As an example: I ran spell check on this post and corrected 7 errors. (there may be more, but speelcheck didn't find them) This is much easier to do in KDE than in any other desktop I've used. However there is something else that you can do easily that I can't easily do in KDE.