FOSS Is Not Free if It's Not Free From Complexity 523
A reader writes:"This article argues that freedom from complexity is an essential part of the first FOSS freedom - the freedom to run a program. Freedom to run means nothing if the exercise of such right excludes people who do not possess high technical knowledge or advanced skills sets. Without the guarantee of "ease of use", the freedom to run FOSS for most users is a hollow promise. " (My own bias ensues here): I think that there are some valuable points in here; what good is a good if it cannot be used, but OTOH this argument seems simplistic.
Author seems confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Usability is not specifically an F/OSS problem - it is a software problem. There's a lot of crap software out there, that the vast majority of people never see (because it costs money). However, many people do see free / oss as it's (generally) availalbe free of charge.
I do take the authors point that for a user to effectively maintain their freedom, free software must be usable.
Not again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Has this guy ever installed Windows XP on a new bare computer? I don't think so... The first thing I have to do is to go and hunt for the diverse drivers for nearly every device that it has. Graphics, sound, wireless,....
Linux often supports everything out of the box, and what is not supported is, ehm... simply not supported because the specs of the devices are not available and thus the developpers that want to develop the drivers have to resort to reverse-engineering.
Sure, application installation is "harder" in a Linux environment, because it doesn't follow the "double-click-on-that-icon-and-press-next-next-nex t-finish" or even worse "insert-cd-and-automatically-run-a-program-that-mi ght-damage-your-computer" (see Sony Rootkit on Audio CD's...)
If we want it that easy, we have only one way to go, and that is the Apple way: drag an application in the "Application" folder and that is all you got to do for installation. The Windows way is actually not what you want...
On the mark (Score:4, Insightful)
Normally, I'd be a little put off by what amounts to an opinion piece bya lawyer on open source, but there are good points:
Current FOSS operating systems (OS) are targeted mainly at geeks, hackers and other technically skilled developers and users. While there have been some progress in making the installation and use of FOSS OSes like Ubuntu easier and simpler, they still do not have the "click-click-click" ease of installation of popular proprietary OSes like Windows XP or Mac OS X. In addition, even after one successfully installs a FOSS OS on a computer, a user will typically have to deal with issues like lack of drivers, incompatibility with third party devices or difficulty in installing new programs or software packages. A normal user wants everything to work out-of-the-box [emphasis mine]. This is especially true in developing countries where a computer costs more than a month's salary. Since a computer is a major purchase, it's usefulness and usability should be present at the moment a user turns on his or her computer. People are not interested in (in fact, most are adverse to) messing around with, tinkering or hacking a program - the second, third and fourth software freedoms.
It goes back to the whole idea of Linux as an everyday operating system. Anyone who is not a geek, i.e. most of the population, is not going to adopt something that isn't easy to operate. I mean, there's no reason to make a Windows-like GUI for Linux unless you want people to actually think of Linux as an alternative to Windows. And while you might impress the average user with a Windows-like look and feel, unless it's just as easy to use out of the box as their Windows PC is now, there will be no great swell of converts.
I've said it before: Linux's popularity depends on what it wants to be. If it wants to be the OS of geeks and hackers and multi-million dollar corporations, so be it. If Linux (or any of its derivatives) wish to compete against Windows for market share, there has to be a shift in thinking, away from kernel-centric, gizmos-and-gadgets way of thinking to the "what would a user want to do" mindset.
The article's not stupid, just free from logic. (Score:2, Insightful)
The entire article hinges on this point:
which is simply wrong. The author acknowledges that "OSes like Ubuntu" are easy to use but dings them on the installation process relative to Windows XP. (S/)He has clearly never installed XP from scratch. That's reflected again in his dig about driver problems...
Those two concerns are addressed by buying a machine with a pre-installed OS and using that. He never argues why you should buy a machine pre-installed with Windows. He also misses the point that all users are, of course, free to learn the advanced technical skills that are dismissed in this column. And the point that such self improvement is much more accessible when the developers of the software in use have preserved the freedoms the author derides as only useful for tinkering that real people have no interest in.
The missing point (Score:3, Insightful)
For example; I work for a semi-large dental office. 3 offices, 100+ employees. Each and everyone of those employees benefit from OSS, even if they don't know it. From the spam being kept out of their mail boxes, to email being delivered all together, to the IM network, not to mention the file server. I won't even go into how the phones are handled.
I am the only one ( on the payroll ) that knows how any of this works, and that benefits at least 100+ people ( not to mention the secondary effects of such a setup ). That's the true power of opensource software.
Re:Author seems confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
Complexity, difficulty of use, difficulty of modification, and difficulty of extension are promoted (thought not consciously) by the GPL and other licensing methods because people have determined that support, training, continued access to modifictions, and fee based extensions are how you make money off them.
I call bollocks. (Score:4, Insightful)
But to call Blender non-free 'cause it's a complex piece of software? That's a very stupid thing to say.
XP does not require a driver hunt. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now there are cases where there are newer drivers that I could go get should I need them but they are not required.
The big difference between installing Linux versus XP?
If I need drivers they most likely exist for XP.
OMG NO DIGG (Score:4, Insightful)
No more blog entries please.
And anyway, there is already a "FOSS OS that is as easy to install and use as any proprietary OS", it's called OpenSUSE. It's the easiest thing I've ever used in my life, though it was bloaty and I eventually got sick of it and came back to Slackware.
sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Math is too hard! Until the mathematicians make it more usable, it will never gain acceptance in the Real World(TM).
Here's my summary of TFA:
"Somebody needs to do everything for me, including all of my thinking."
Move alone everyone. There is nothing to see here.
Re:Author seems confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's Not Confused (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't agree with his argument but it's not because he's confused
You seem confused. (Score:3, Insightful)
Even this push into Windows software does not bring with it the types of issues you describe, as the author is discussing relatively mature programs.
To summarize TFA's point: Encourage more OSS on Windows, so that when the OSS operating systems are stupid simple, the transition will be transparent to the user. Everything will just work.
Re:Not again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm Windows is hard to install (well, not really) and Linux is easy to install, but if it turns out to be hard to install, then it's someone else's fault! Oh, and Linux applications are harder to install because Windows applications are easy to install, but that's a good thing because sometimes people do bad things, (even though they could also do bad things on Linux, they would just be harder to install, and it would be someone else's fault anyway). So, anyway, if you want easy, then you need to use a Mac(ignoring that the discussion is about the need for FOSS software to be more user-friendly).
So, in summary: If someone suggests that FOSS needs to be more user friendly, then the answer is that Windows sucks and if you want useability, go buy a Mac.
Re:Author seems confused. (Score:3, Insightful)
So what you're saying is: You get what you pay for?
Re:On the mark (Score:1, Insightful)
Given that you don't need to know about viruses, what is safe to click on and so on, Linux is easier.
Re:MOD STORY INSIGHTFUL (Score:5, Insightful)
I always like the whole Photoshop vs GIMP discussion. People take a lot of courses learning Photoshop. Then when you start a discussion that GIMP is a great tool they always complain that it's design isn't intuitive and that Photoshop is "better". Yet they spend hours learning how to use Photoshop. If they spend the same time learning GIMP there wouldn't be a problem.
Re:Not again... (Score:3, Insightful)
The lack of a stable binary interface for drivers. The main reason is strictly philosophical but it drives me nuts.
Why should I constantly have to get new drivers when I upgrade Linux? Often I have to recompile the old driver. Yea it isn't that hard for me to do but it is out side the comfort zone of about 99.9% of the computer using population! Nvidia and ATI are not going to open source their drivers anytime soon. We will keep using Nvidia and ATIs closed source drivers because they are 1. Free and 2. Work. Making it painful by not having a clean, stable, binary interface will not work. All it does is make users lives harder and slow adoption of Linux.
Since I have just helped a friend install XP on a new system she built I know that it can be a total PITA to install. She had to slipstream SP2 and then hunt down drivers for her sata controller. Ubuntu looks like child's play compared to that.
Re:On the mark (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is "that easy to use" or "works out of the box" that eveybody says Windows has? I've never been able to see it, and don't know a user that is able to install Windows (not a lot of people) and not able to install an easy Linux distro.
"Works out of the box" is even the worse possible description of Windows, since it is useless out of the box.
Re:Author seems confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
This has resulted in a system which has solid technical underpinnings, and yet has become more and more usable over time.
Today's Linux systems, for example, are far easier to install and use than they were just a few years ago, and that curve continues to improve for the end-user.
Re:Author seems confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Complexity of use is definitely complexity here. Like good programmers, a lot of the people working on FOSS are trying to build in flexibility. This means a boatload of options, most of which are cryptic techno-speak for interoperability. Instead of tucking all of the options out of the way of people who won't understand them, much FOSS even requires that you deal with these settings before the software will even work. The author is using complexity from a user perspective, which is a more specific gripe than just complaining about usability, which is broader.
2) I agree that it is a problem with software in general, but FOSS is particularly bad in this regard. Paid software companies that want to have a popular product will hire people who might not be coding experts, but understand usability for their target audience to come in and help create the result. They also end up hiring people who can translate between these folks and the devs so they don't kill each other. One outstanding criticism of FOSS is that most projects exclude those without a coding skillset even if they can bring other skillsets to the table that would improve the project. This means that people who have insights regarding usability often get excluded from influencing development.
I do want to point out that a vast majority of FOSS is just fine because the target audience is very technology savvy folks. The problem here is when FOSS evangalists run around asking why people are still installing Windows when this great other OS is available for free. Even if FOSS were to bridge that last usability gap to the non-technical user, there are other obstacles which bar the way, but this last gap is a requirement for use by the general public.
Freedom isn't free (Score:5, Insightful)
My Linux boxes are free in the sense that I can hire anyone I want to help me with them, or I can get a book from O'Reilly Media, and do it myself.
Freedom doesn't mean that no effort/expense is required. It only means that the effort won't be artificially impeded.
Re:Simplistic? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that the human organism has two modes of learning. Babies tend to learn by blind repetition and obedience; older children and adults tend to think more in terms of abstract concepts and underlying reasons. This makes sense from a survival point of view: it's more important for a toddler not to fall off a cliff / get eaten by a bear / drown &c., than to understand why not.
It seems that some adults are simply frightened of computers, and this is triggering a change in their behaviour around computers. The Eternal N00b is reduced to the status of a three-year-old playing near a pit of deadly vipers. The computer's error messages are interpreted akin to the strident warnings barked out by a nearby adult. The E.N. learns nothing about the way computers work, only that certain courses of action are proscribed. A real child probably would eventually come to understand what is so dangerous about the snakes, or leave them alone altogether. In fear born of ignorance, the Eternal N00b never understands computers or software, only learns by rote what not to do; and so will remain evermore a n00b.
Re:MOD STORY UNSIGHTFUL (Score:3, Insightful)
Photoshop I have seldom used, so I know little about that. But I have used the Gimp too often. It always has something that makes me start screaming at my monitor, and that is a very bad sign for any program.
It does not matter that photoshop is hard to learn too, the problem is that it takes too much time to learn the gimp's interface. I don't want to spend 3 weeks learning the gimp, I want it to do what I want when I need it.
If any Gimp developers replies that I am not (in) the intended audience, then she/he does not deserve widespread succes. I heard that there was a new and more friendly editor named xara in town, so I'll be checking that one out soon. They don't have to do that many things right to win me (and a lot of other part-time gimp users) over.
But to tie the diversion to TFA; the problem is most likely caused that FOSS developers are mostly sratching their own itches. So for them it is no problem at all that the interface is hard to understand. They probably won't even notice, because when you have developed the software, you have automatically learned the interface (or molded it to your expectations). And when it gets really bad and it finally is suggested that the interface needs to be totally overhauled, the developers will baulk at it because all of a sudden they will need to unlearn the old interface and learn a new one.
My suggestion how to this problem: make the interface skinnable or plug-able, so that other people can develop a more simple interface. I would love it if I could change the interface behaviour via (menu)->edit->preferences->configure interface, or (menu)->settings->configure interface. And while you are at it, please dump that braindead gnome toolkit for a kde one :P
Re:sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of you don't understand the point of the article. Of course, somethings are going to hard.
The question is whether or not the user is wasting effort getting past YOUR (the developer's) CRUFT-- or whether they are spending effort efficiently focusing on THEIR PROBLEMS.
For example...
If installing a piece of software means having to edit a ridiculous xml config file, many people just aren't going to do it, and for good reason.
Note to developer's: xml was NOT meant to be editted by hand. You have great tools at your disposal to automate the manipulation of xml for your users. USE THEM! Don't make people guess and struggle with config files because you are are not willing to either make SANE "out of the box" default configs or are too lazy to provide a basic wizard to make things easy.
Re:Author seems confused. (Score:3, Insightful)
What it comes down to is that making a system easy to use for non-techs is HARD. Like thourough documentation, it is tedious and thankless work. There is just no motivation for volunteer developers to go that extra step. If the software works for them and the people on their mailing list, that is often good enough.
-matthew
Re:Simplistic? (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting back to the licenses and concepts though... think about the amount of people who hear "Linux" and think that it includes Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and the like. I know that one of my supervisors thinks that "Linux" means ANY software that is given away at no charge. But how do you explain to "Joe Average" that Linux is the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system which is packaged by multiple projects and vendors as a distribution? And beyond that, how do you get people to realize that RedHat, Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, SuSE and all the others are NOT just GNU/Linux, but are various distributions of GNU/Linux? And how do you get them to see the value in this? That's the problem. It's not FOSS at all, it's the ignorance of most users these days and we have "ease of use" lies to thank for that. There was a time in the United States of America when people were raised to respect intelligence and asipre to it. Today, they are raised to respect earning power and asipre to "being rich". That's why people don't get FOSS. They're being conditioned to be the ultimate consumers instead of producers themselves. And that's just the way business wants it.
Re:Freedom isn't free (Score:3, Insightful)
People are free to have easier to use FOSS software - all they have to do is learn how the software works and either submit patches that make it easier to use, write their own version that is easier to use, or write a frontend that makes it easier to use. Everyone has that freedom. If they don't want to take advantage of it then it's their own problem. That's where their rights and responsibilities meet.
Leaving behind the whole freedom issue though I'll agree that FOSS could often be easier. Sometimes it is well designed and well documented but to often it's something thrown together without concern and with either sucky or non-existing documentation. It's frustrating, even for advanced users, when your trying to use something and you're expected to read, and sometimes fix, the source code to figure things out. For programs that are out of beta and in use by thousands or millions of people that isn't a good situation.
Re:Simplistic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Computers, on the other hand, allow the user to run multiple applications, enter text, perform searches, communicate with a global network, burn writable media, etc. A web browser alone has about twenty times more options than a car. They are not simple machines, and the people who have been selling them as such have been lying through their teeth.
You can either have a simple interface, or a full feature set. You can't have both. Google's Search, for example, is so simple because you can take one operation. That's all. I give them some words, it gives me back what it thinks I mean. Anything more complex (searching within a certain site, searching page titles) uses cryptic search keys that most users are unaware of. Even more advanced operations like searching by change date, are not provided at all. Desktop software provides many, many more options, and it has to because the software provides that much functionality. But it also requires people to learn for a change. I'm all for simplifying interfaces as much as possible, but there's a certain amount of complexity inherent in a task.
Re:sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)
While undeniably funny, this is decidedly not insightful. First, math is hard, and thus the widespread use of calculators and computers to make it easier.
Here's my summary of TFA: "Somebody needs to do everything for me, including all of my thinking."
This couldn't be further from what TFA actually says. A better summary would be "don't make me have to spend time fiddling with the cruft, make it easy to use so I can get on with thinking about the important stuff."
A good user interface will get out of the way and let you get your job done, and perhaps more important it will have a shallow, near linear learning curve. A bad user interface imposes itself between you and the problem space, and is characterized by a steep learning curve. The command line is a great example of this. It requires a large amount of knowlege to do rather simple things compared to a GUI. Command lines have their place -- for those who have the knowlege required and need to do complicated things, they are quite useful.
In fact... (Score:4, Insightful)
Freedom comes with responsibility. A free people can only remain so if they watch their government. If one is to be free to walk the streets, one must be able to protect oneself. When one is free to learn, one must take care to educate oneself.
Therefore, freedom comes with the exercise of effort (vigilance, skill, exercise, study) and cannot be exercised without it.
If one does not watch, the power of government will increase. If one cannot defend oneself, he will be afraid to go out at night or rely on the police to protect him. If one is not educated, anyone can tell him anything, and he will believe it.
Convenience is not a "freedom".
Positive vs. negative freedom (Score:2, Insightful)
Roosevelt started it with his "Freedom from Want" business, and now the left wing pushes for the "right" to a job, or a house, or a college education, and also for such moonbeams as the "right" not to feel offended or marginalized based on one's personal characteristics.
The common denominator in the Left's concept of liberty is that they see nothing wrong with violating someone else's ancient natural rights in order to award pseudo-"rights" (privileges) to people they feel deserve it. Speech codes violate my right to speak my mind lest someone else be offended. The "right" to a job means someone less favored gets a job taken away (affirmative action) or all of us have tax money extorted at gunpoint to subsidize jobs for people who otherwise couldn't hold one (i.e. most government workers and educrats).
When a lefty tries to tell me that someone has a "right" to a job, my response is "Fuck you, you have liberty unparalleled in human history, use it to find your own job or starve to death, I don't care which." And when I see a headline like "FOSS Is Not Free If It's Not Free From Complexity", my response is "Fuck you, it is too free, and if you're too stupid to use it that's your problem and nobody else's."
-ccm
Re:Simplistic? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you did not. You are merely confused.
A computerized fuel pump is NOT (repeat NOT) a feature. It is a matter of internal complexity. It is not something that a user can do with a car. It is not a function a user would want to perform with the car. It is not something the car is purchased to do.
People buy cars to perferofm some task. Go from here to there. Haul some stuff in the process. That's it. That's what you do with a car. THE ONE feature of a car is this ability to move. All else is flrill (that is bought with added complexity of the interface).
People buy computers to send and receive email. Browse the www. Share photos. Produce business reports. Manage their finances and file taxes. Download music. Thousands of different features that all have to be represented in the UI. It does not matter what happens under the hood -- the user interface does not get more complex because you put in more ram or a faster processor. Because these are NOT (repeat NOT) features any more than the computerized fuel pump.
You need to stop looking at the car from the perspective of a mechanic and look at it from the perspective of the USER of the computer. The "features" are things like "audio system". And the fuller the feature set, the more complex the interface becomes. A fuel injection system is NOT (repeat: NOT) a feature in todays cars. All cars have it. It is not even mentioned in the ad. It does not influence a single buying decision anywhere. Nobody goes around and brags about it. It does not change one iota about the features of the car: when you depress this pedal here it accelerates and when you hit that other pedal is slows down.
There's a metric bazillion things in todays computers that they didn't have 15 years ago, memory controllers and GPUs and onboard ethernet -- and none of them change the features of the computer which are "when you click this icon you get a web-browser whic will show some page and if you want to change what it shows you click on options | preferences tab to 'general', click on the 'home page' button ..." etc etc. Complexity of UI because there is a feature here (where does the browser start) that the car simply doesn't have (it always starts where you last left it). You can strip this complexity from the browser UI by making it work like the car and always start where you last turned it off. Less complex UI, reduced feature set.
And that's only ONE feature of only ONE piece of software that people use on a computer for ONE task. While "accelerating and decelerating and steering" pretty much exhaust the feature list of a car: Automatic transmission caught on exactly because "shifting gears" is NOT a feature - it is an annoyance that most people would like to get rid of because it doesn't contribute to this feature set. People buy computers to browse the web -- they don't buy cars "to shift gears".