In this tough economic time, with unemployment approaching 10% (in the U.S.), let me be the first to say FUCK YOU!
In a world where many people have never made a phone call [...] let me be the first to say FUCK YOU!
it will also monitor other adult drivers.
Not if you put a PostIt note over it while you're driving.
then they say the contract is broken and make you pay a fine or refuse to pay if something happens.
and what if the next thing they ask is odb recording?
oh, and obviously recording someone without having access to registration unless something happens automagically makes him drive safer. yeah, sure.
1. Lack of attention to interface and usability design. This is not "eye candy". Consider: People think Photoshop is easier to use than Gimp. What does that tell you? (Responses that trash Photoshop users illustrate the problem.)
when there's a problem with a gui, people always talk about gimp. firefox has a good gui design, the whole ubuntu distro is actually easy for a normal user, yet all you see is gimp.
gimp's gui is a mess, ok, but there are plently of good opensource gui too. ubuntu/gnome made a good set for instance.
2. I get the impression that, apart from the corporate funded biggies, many open source projects are staffed by one or two people. That's not confidence-insipiring when I'm looking for software to use for years in the future.
in opensource project there usually is a single mantainer and a lot of coders. when you think about it, changing mantainer is like changin ceo. no big difference. but if the company dies, it's dead. if the main mantainer leaves, the worst that could happen is a fork. can you predict how a company will be in 10 years? so what's worst?
3. Rushed updates often made to conform to an established schedule. If an update needs more time, don't release it.
so you get one update per month?
4. Lack of innovation. Software innovation is really, really hard and no one does it well. However, open source software, more or less by intent, produces many slightly varied iterations of the same code. I.e., forks.
gotta love this one. fork is a possibility, not something granted for all opensource projects. care to list some big forked opensource projects where both the main and the fork are being developed?
5. Hostile attitude to customers: One of the touted benefits of open source software is access online to developers and other cognoscenti for tech support. Although I suspect it happens with less frequency these days, too many open source users are met with hostile "code it yourself" or "I'm not interested in that..." responses when they ask for help with a problem. Online support forums should not run bugtracking software.That's a developer-only tool.
soo... is adobe accepting bug reports from users now? microsoft? when was the last time you submitted a bug report to a closed source project and it was actually fixed?
maybe it's just me, but apart from #1 these points should make you choose opensource.
funny thing is, your list does not include "gets the job done", which should really be number 1 on the list.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
