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GNU is Not Unix Software

The Open Group's New Open Source Strategy 287

Posted by michael from the thinking-caps-on dept.
Bruce Perens writes "The Open Group hasn't always had the best reputation in the Open Source community, mostly because of their handling of Motif, which remained proprietary for much too long. But there's no arguing with the success of our community, and now the Open Group leadership understands that their organization must be fully involved in Open Source... or it's time for them to change their name. To that end, the Open Group contracted me to develop an Open Source strategy for their organization. The draft strategy has been published and they are requesting comment. - Bruce"
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The Open Group's New Open Source Strategy More

The Open Group's New Open Source Strategy

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  • An added strategy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Friday July 25, 2003 @12:56PM (#6533785) Journal
    The Open Group needs to add one more major strategy: preparing for and combating frivilous legal claims and the insuing litigations.

    This is perhaps the greatest (and one day maybe even the only) threat to Open Source.

    • Re:An added strategy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kmak ( 692406 )
      Maybe... but it still remains to be seen if Open Source can generate enough revenue for the developers after reaching critical mass...

    • Re:An added strategy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jameth ( 664111 )
      I would say it is definitely the only threat. Now, it might not be the only threat to open source expanding further, but open source has gone this far with only what it has, and a strong legal suit is the only thing that can make it backtrack.

      Worries about open source being profitable forget that open source lasted plenty long without profitability.

      • Re:An added strategy (Score:5, Interesting)

        by defile ( 1059 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:51PM (#6534257) Homepage Journal

        Worries about open source being profitable forget that open source lasted plenty long without profitability.

        Open source and business have gone hand-in-hand from the start. What's different today is that you have a few companies trying to turn it into a shrinkwrap product.

        Whether those endeavors succeed or fail is irrelevant to open source in itself.

    • preparing for and combating frivilous legal claims and the insuing litigations.
      Not likely to occur. It appears that Sun is also one of the companies behind the SCO suit. They are also part of open group. I doubt that they will permit Open Group to help stop them, even though they have more to lose with MS holding power than Linux gaining it.

      • Re:An added strategy (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) * <bruce@perens.com> on Friday July 25, 2003 @02:01PM (#6534350) Homepage Journal
        I think SCO is a member, too. Open Group is not vendor-dominated, as far as I can tell. They have lots of large corporate users in their membership, some government agencies (including DOD/DISA), etc.

        And regarding Sun, specifically, Sun has a multiple-personality disorder where Free Software is concerned. They help us with one hand and hurt with the other. This is also true for IBM, Intel, and HP. They have an internal conflict of interest that they won't be able to resolve in this decade. The best we can do is live with it.

        Bruce

        • Open Group does have many members, but over the years, I have noticed that large corps carry a lot of weight inside of O.G.(more than should be). And as you pointed out just about all large corps have split personalities ( I Have worked at HP/Ft.Collins and IBM years ago). But OG will need something that they have been lacking for years; a backbone.

          BTW, I do remember the fighting that occurred in OG over the toolkit. It was not really about purposeful vendor differention, but an inability to get Sun, HP,
          • Eric Raymond thinks my point about the no-canonical-X-widget-set decision giving the market to MS is "wack". He thinks it has more to do with vendors not wanting to give up high-margin hardware.

            Bruce

            • Eric Raymond thinks my point about the no-canonical-X-widget-set decision giving the market to MS is "wack".
              Sadly, I think that Eric is more correct. The outlandish prices being charged long ago made MS possible (like what Linux/BSD/OO is doing to MS these days). It was hard to justify Xterms when all ppl could see was the upfront costs rather than long term costs.
              But no base UI toolkit really did hurt.
              I was guessing that you were trying to be polically correct to get a sign off or simply to be polite.

  • Well.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday July 25, 2003 @12:58PM (#6533804) Homepage Journal

    I won't believe they're serious until they change their name to Gnu/OpenGroup.
    • You know it was Richard Stallman that suggested the term "POSIX" which is now the official name of some important Open Group standards.

  • Motif? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:05PM (#6533875) Homepage
    Huh? I thought Motif still was proprietary, even to this day. Or at least, it is proprietary software in the sense of not being free software. Or was there some big announcement I missed?

    • Re:Motif? (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheViffer ( 128272 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:11PM (#6533933)
      Motif Faq [faqs.org]

      Subject: 2)* Is the Motif source code publically available?
      [Last modified: Jan 02]

      Answer: On May 15, 2000 the Open Group released the Motif source code for
      Motif 2.1, using a public license, to the Open Source community. On January
      29, 2002, Open Motif 2.2 was released.

      • Re:Motif? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
        Yes - it's available under a semi-free licence that lets you distribute it alongside Linux, but it's still not free software. So Lesstif is not obsolete quite yet.

    • Re:Motif? (Score:3, Informative)

      by zephc ( 225327 )
      According to the Motif FAQ, "On May 15, 2000 the Open Group released the Motif source code for Motif 2.1, using a public license, to the Open Source community. On January 29, 2002, Open Motif 2.2 was released.

      For more information on Open Motif, see:

      http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/ [opengroup.org]"

  • Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by billstr78 ( 535271 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:05PM (#6533876) Homepage
    This is a very good question. The trend that Open Source software seems to encorage is a gradual but irreversable shift away from propriatary and profiting methods. As stated in the strategy, this is good for the majority (users) and bad for the minority (vendors). The question is wether or not this method of software development is sustainable if it's popularity grew to a point where it was the majority method of development.

    Some would say that it would be great. Everything would be free, innovation would happen at a rapid rate, but what about compensation for the developers. Software written under a GLP type licience, does not leave room for profits from the actual software. Ad-hoc services can only go so far to support an entire development effort. Who pays the developers for thier hard work?

    The question I leave open for disucssion is this: How sustainable do you think Open Source in it's current form is and do you think that varients such as the Apache Licience are an innevatable change necessary for the properity of the community.
    • If Open Source were the only software solution there would become a lack of demand for paid developers. Sure there ar epoeple who make a living developing for open source but they are in the minority. So if the lack of demand for developers went down the people who currently work on open source projects as a hobby who are programmers would largely have to move to another profession to be able to support themselves. This fallout in the demand for software developers would cause a shift away from software dev
      • If Open Source were the only software solution there would become a lack of demand for paid developers Most of the software development happening today is for code that runs in house, so that businesses can handle their accounting, inventory, transportation and personnel needs. This will still be the case down the road, regardless of whether the dominant commercial software model is proprietary, open-source, or public domain.

        They're going to need coders to develop that software, and those coders ain't go

        • Developing in house solutions is generally a much different type of programming than that which is done for commercially available applications. Typically in house it applications are written in very high level languages such as Java, C#, asp, php, i.e. not C, C++, assembly.. How does that kind of work help one to hack on a kernel or a RDBMS? If this is the only kind of software that is going to be paid for, then the level of hobbyist skill is going to drop considerably. If you don't believe me, take someon
          • I don't disagree with you. Chances are that this type of development will shrink as open source software replaces proprietary software. It will shrink, but it won't die away. Companies that make their living off of selling systems (IBM) or hardware (Intel) will continue to fund open-source develeopment.

          • Typically in house it applications are written in very high level languages such as Java, C#, asp, php, i.e. not C, C++, assembly..

            I don't suppose you'd care to supply some backup for your claim? First, C, C++, and Java are all 3GLs. Second, the last survey I read showed that C/C++ was still the most often used programming language for in-house applications. I know for sure that it is the most used language at the company I work for (and the last company I worked for, too).

      • There are certain applications that require far more than just great software skills to develop. One example is tax software; you need accountants to keep up with all of the federal, state, and local taxes, and those change every year.

        Also, you have software where the setup/service part of it counts almost as much as the code. The physical plant at my university (where I work) is currently looking at facilities management software, and the process of the company people coming in and assisting in the mass
    • An important issue...

      My theory is that free software will self-destruct if all programmers lose their jobs. A lot of people who create free software are volunteers. Most of these people have other full-time jobs that pay for their living. My view is that if NO developers were paid for their jobs (doesn't matter what), then the free software movement will collapse. Thes people would instead spend time searching for jobs to make a living.

      What all this means is that what you are saying won't happen (ie

    • Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by pjack76 ( 682382 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:19PM (#6534008)
      Well, my job right now is basically to support my organization's systems. If the accounting system goes wonky, I call the vendor to address it. If our in-house web intranet thingy goes wonky, I fix it. If a WinNT4.0 desktop goes wonky, I explain that we are all powerless to do anything, let's go have a drink.

      My point is that in an all-open-source world, I would still have a job: I'd be answering user's requests and fixing bugs for them. I just wouldn't have to call vendors anymore, and I could actually fix a desktop too.

    • Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 73939133 ( 676561 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:42PM (#6534175)
      The trend that Open Source software seems to encorage is a gradual but irreversable shift away from propriatary and profiting methods. As stated in the strategy, this is good for the majority (users) and bad for the minority (vendors). The question is wether or not this method of software development is sustainable if it's popularity grew to a point where it was the majority method of development.

      No, that is not the question. The 40-70% profit margins achieved by vendors are clearly unsustainable--they can't exist in an efficient market. Open source software just happens to be the mechanism by which this market finally starts operating efficiently.

      How sustainable do you think Open Source in it's current form

      You are viewing open source software as some kind of alternative to proprietary development, but it is not. Rather, it is a stage in the evolution of a software market segment.

      Something like the UNIX kernel used to cost lots of money because it provided functionality that was not widely available. But it was natural for it eventually to become open source. Ditto for software like Wordperfect and Microsoft word: initially, people could charge a premium for it because few people offered it (let's not get into the fact that the technology was invented elsewhere), but (absent monopolistic barriers), something like OpenOffice now gives you the same functionality for free.

      You can make a big profit on some innovative piece of software for a few years, but then it gets commoditized and your price will go down from competition. Software is different from other goods there because it really has no physical component; generic drugs, electronics, etc., still have a non-zero cost even if there is no intellectual property. That's why it is ultimately open source programmers, not no-name manufacturers, that are driving software prices down, and in fact are driving them to how much it costs to make another unit of product: zero.

      In short, open source software is sustainable--it's pretty much inevitable in an efficient market. The only thing that can kill it is government interference in the market or monopolistic practices.
      • This directly contradicts just about every piece of evangelizing about OSS that I've ever heard - that it is more innovative. What you're basically saying, as far as I can tell, is that OSS is inherently lacking in innovation, rather OSS can just copy technology that has already been made and successfully marketed in closed source for a few years?
        • It goes both ways. Some open souce software innovates. Some copies. And some copies an idea and expands it in innovative ways (OpenOffice did XML-based files before M$ started following with Office 2k3.)
        • This directly contradicts just about every piece of evangelizing about OSS that I've ever heard - that it is more innovative.

          There are two classes of OSS.

          One class is things like GNU C, Linux, Perl, gawk, OpenOffice, Apache, etc. They don't innovate--they are reimplementations of well-understood technologies. Individuals and companies spend time and money on them for economic reasons: sharing the development costs helps them lower costs.

          Another class is things like X11, Mosix, ghc, Festival, etc. Tho
      • In short, open source software is sustainable--it's pretty much inevitable in an efficient market.

        Score: 10, Understanding why Microsoft's days are numbered :)

        I think the only software products that will continue to hold out as proprietary software in the long term will be CAD/CAM, where the complexity from starting design to performing manufacturing is too complex and expensive to be commoditized, yet. One piece of evidence for this, is that the big CAD software vendors are still pushing features into
    • According to European and US economic data, a minority of software jobs are connected with retail software. Most software is not written to be sold. Instead, software is a cost-center within a company that does something else for its profit-center. Internal software is often a non-differentiating (doesn't make your company different from the competition) but necessary. This is all perfect for Open Source collaboration.

      So, to the question "will Open Source kill my job?", the answer is generally "no". India will kill your job (well, those of you who are not in India). And I don't know what you should do about that.

      Bruce

      • I would think that in-house programming projects would be less likely to be shipped out to India than retail software. It's a great benefit to have in-house developers physically present, as they need to be able to work with users to assess needs, address problems, train users, etc.

        • I would think that in-house programming projects would be less likely to be shipped out to India than retail software. It's a great benefit to have in-house developers physically present, as they need to be able to work with users to assess needs, address problems, train users, etc.

          What you say makes sense, but, unfortunately, it's not true. You need to spend some time at infoworld.com and the other trade-rag sites. When the CEO says the company is offshoring its IT, the stock price jumps and his/her

    • Some would say that it would be great. Everything would be free, innovation would happen at a rapid rate, but what about compensation for the developers. Software written under a GLP type licience, does not leave room for profits from the actual software. Ad-hoc services can only go so far to support an entire development effort. Who pays the developers for thier hard work?

      I think it will reach some sort of equilibrium between Open and Proprietary software. Commodity software (Operating Systems, browers,

  • OSF/1? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by emil ( 695 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:06PM (#6533890)

    Didn't The Open Group do an entire UNIX implementation (the only implementation of which was Digital OSF/1|UNIX|Tru64)?

    If so, how much of this could they open? Anything useful in it?

    • They're a relic of a different time. Think Open Standards, not Open Source. The term Open Source only dates back to 1998 [opensource.org].

    • mk (as in mkLinux) (Score:4, Informative)

      by crow ( 16139 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:49PM (#6534234) Homepage Journal
      Yes, OSF (later The Open Group after they merged with X/Open) created OSF/1, which was originally going to be the Unix for all the member companies. I think that included DEC, HP, and IBM, but not Sun. In the end, only DEC moved away from using their own home-grown system, so it could be considered a failure based on the original goals.

      Later, The Open Group developed mk, based on the Mach 3 microkernel. While the Unix personality for the kernel was tainted with AT&T code, the microkernel was able to be released for free. The free mk was released with a Linux-based server, with the package known as mkLinux. Some (most?) of the funding for mk came from Apple, and I believe that it is the basis for OS X.

      There was a little-known project called mk++, which was a complete re-write of the Mach microkernel interfaces using C++. There was a plan to release a book on mk++ along with a CD containing mk++Linux. Unfortunately, a month or so before it was to be sent off, all development efforts were shut down, and The Open Group became a Unix branding organization.

      NOTE: I worked briefly at The Open Group, doing work on mk and mk++.
      • Preston,

        If you know of code that they could/should release, this would be a good time to agitate for that.

        Bruce

      • I think that included DEC, HP, and IBM, but not Sun.

        Indeed...OSF was founded in response to Sun and AT&T getting together to work on System V Release 4. This scared the other UNIX vendors, and they wanted to make sure they had a UNIX to sell, too. The joke was the "OSF" stood for "Oppose Sun Forever."

        Fujitsu, Bull, and Siemens were the other major original members. There were lots of other companies that were sort of "associate" members.

  • Draft strategy is excellent summary of Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Thagg ( 9904 ) <thadbeier@gmail.com> on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:06PM (#6533891) Journal
    Bruce,

    I think that the opening section of your draft strategy is the best summary of the current state of the world of open-source/closed-source detente. It's exactly right that proprietary solutions are failing, and will fail with increasing rates, as open source proliferates and hardware increasingly becomes a commodity.

    I have two issues with the summary. The first is that it a strategy should be a long-term document, something that might be as valid five or ten years from now as it is today (this compares to a tactical position.) I don't think that the current stated strategy, while appropriate to this time of flux, will be appropriate then.

    Second, I just have a issue with the 'Sorry Vendors' line at the end of the first section -- everything else in the document is straightforward, concise, and emotion-free.

    thad

  • start with a name change (Score:5, Funny)

    by b17bmbr ( 608864 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:07PM (#6533898)
    how about,
    • "The now we're open group"
    • "More Open Group"
    • "We haven't been so Open in the past, but we've see the errors of our ways Group"
    • "No longer Not Open group"
    • "Bandwagon Group"
    • "The New and Improved Open Group"
    • "Really Open Group"
    • "This time we mean it Open Group"
    • ... "The Group formerly known as Open" doesn't really have the right associations for this move... ;-)

      Ah well, it didn't work for Prince either.

    • The word "Open" in "Open Group" really was meaningful and justified: using open APIs, APIs that anybody could implement, they created competition and already helped drive software prices down. Open source is just a further evolution of the software market, but you shouldn't underestimate the historical importance of open APIs.
      • APIs that anybody could implement

        Anybody that could afford the API document could implement. Years ago when I wanted to know what POSIX really said, I just couldn't afford a copy. And I couldn't justify it to get the company to spring for it either. So I got an O'Reilly book instead.

        Mind you, this is exactly why a famous "POSIX work-alike" system is able to do exactly that. Get a copy of the spec, start coding.

        • Years ago when I wanted to know what POSIX really said, I just couldn't afford a copy. And I couldn't justify it to get the company to spring for it either. So I got an O'Reilly book instead.

          That's fine: the author of the O'Reilly book looked at the POSIX spec and shared the results with you. The effect of POSIX was still to set an open standard that many people knew, understood, and were using, whether they had looked at the original standards documents or not.

  • Open for business. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ratfynk ( 456467 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:17PM (#6533995) Journal
    There does need to be a business community developed among Open Source, and the very idea free not as in free beer. To go about bashing (even if you are a born again basher) those who seriously try to make a living with technology is just stupid.

    The best possible way to accomplish this is to set a model of co-operative enterprise that todays over-blown corporate despots cannot compete with. If you study nature co-operative systems invariably will out compete when up against closed single modeled systems. The fundamentals of this are already in the GPL which will go down in history as one of the great documents of our time. Along with other human social documents like the Magna Carta. RMS really is a visionary.

  • Too complex/too little time? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by G3ckoG33k ( 647276 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:29PM (#6534076)
    To me these issues are quite complex, and a draft like this need a follow up here at Slashdot soonish. Perhaps within a week to get a good brainstorming settle.

    Unfortunately all good remarks will come very late to this message, when people have had time to read it carefully. Then, there are already more than 500 comments, of less value and people don't really care any longer.

    My suggestion, in cases like these, would be to use the Slashdot forum as a forum with delay - as is done before an upcoming interview. A short notice in advance and a more indepth follow later. Let people have a few days to think it over and get a refreshener then. Perhaps overdoing it? Whatever.

  • Comments? Hah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by batkins ( 602341 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:30PM (#6534090) Homepage
    So, wait, he expects the Slashdot readers to read a draft and comment on it? Ha! Read the article - that's a good one, Bruce.

  • The OpenGroup is the Cathedral and irrelevant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GGardner ( 97375 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @01:32PM (#6534103)
    The Open Group has been pretty much irrelevant for the last 5 years, not because they have been closed source, but because they are a Cathedral style closed source. Both Gnome and KDE have become far, far superior to Motif in a far shorter amount of time. What role is there to play for a centralized standards-blessing body in the world of the distributed, bazaar-style development?
    • I was on the Motif team at OSF (I can't bring myself to call it The Open Group). I agree OSF was the Cathedral. I bet you are also right that KDE and Gnome are better than Motif in a shorter amount of time. Be careful though about how you attribute this. And also be careful about the value of this distinction.

      Both Gnome and KDE were able to leverage the design work that went into Motif and the other widget sets that came before them. Motif was better than Athena for the same reason. Most of the hard

      • As for the value - When Motif was around and strong, it was clear to Unix developers what widget set and style to use.

        Yeah, Athena, because it was the only one affordable/approachable for a scratch-an-itch, non-commercial project. There were no free X projects of any significance around that had any kind of decent interface, except for those folks who invented their own widget sets, like the author of Xv, and the GIMP team.

        UNIX GUI development on X Windows was a ghetto for a very long time because th

      • Both Gnome and KDE were able to leverage the design work that went into Motif and the other widget sets that came before them. Motif was better than Athena for the same reason. Most of the hard work goes into the design.

        Can you cite an example, as I don't think this is true. Motif sits atop of libXt, which turned out to be a huge mistake in retrospect. Neither KDE/QT nor Gnome use the X toolkit. QT was designed to work with a preprocessed C++, whereas Motif is pure C.

        The real reason that Motif is bet

  • When attorneys new to Open Source have access to another attorney who is experienced with Open Source licensing, especially the GPL, the process goes much more smoothly. One way we can help is to produce a reference for attorneys, or programs for attorneys at our meetings.

    Does anyone know of a reference quide or set of resources that might help IP attorneys start thinking about the GPL and open source?

    I'm working on building a cross-corporation (non profits) knowledge sharing network that will likely rel

  • Does Open Source always equal free? I know it is nice to have the source code, but I must admit I have never really looked at it for the apps I use. In some ways, I really could care less.

    But if I wanted a application that I knew needed some maintence, support, etc - I don't see any reason not to pay the money. Examples being mySQL, StarOffice, a Linux distro, etc.

    I think Open Source's biggest gain is that it has a "nice to know" feature - the source code. Suppose someone offered a product for $50
  • The marketing mechanism of global Open Source community is best described as a massively parallel drunkards walk, filtered by a Darwinistic process. This looks more like research than conventionally driven development.

    Social darwinism, joined with a "market mechanism" mumbo-jumbo, to describe how Open Source, and research functions/works? I am, to put it mildly, astonished that Perens has written this!

    I was sort of hoping that social darwinism to describe social structure was a relic of the last cent

    • Naaah, you've got to be a troll.

      Social Darwinism is the misapplication of a vulgarized form of Darwinian theory to race. Evolution is a fact in biological and scientific contexts, but its application to race is hogwash. And the same goes for Shockley's theories about race. None of this has anything to do with the selection that software goes through when people choose to aggregate a community around it, or choose not to.

      Bruce

  • The Open Group announcing that they're interested in Open Source Software is like the Deutsche Democratic Republic announcing they're interested in becoming a democratic republic.

    DDR (Deutsche Democratic Republic) was the name of East Germany during the time it was a Communist, non-democratic non-republic, which was as ironic as the Open Group calling themselves an open group.

    To bring it into the present: It's as ironic as George Bush announcing he's finally going to pay attention to military intelligen

  • Interesting. It seems to me that the computer software industry is being commoditized into basic tools for jobs, and your write up seems to agree with this view.

    In other words, companies need X and Y tools, and they need someone to provide them. Anyone will do, and the labor of the installation of X and Y is mainly what is paid over the cost of X and Y. It seems similar to, say, the furniture industry, where you have a Lazy Boy sofa, which you can get from anyone. The difference between the sofa providers
  • The key section is titled "Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members?", and from my reading of that
    section, the answer is "no".

    You say how a "nonrivalrous public good" is good
    for the general population, but generally bad for
    vendors. Well, the Open Group members are those
    vendors, they are not the "general population"
    or even "users".

    You talk about reduced vendor margins and how vendors
    must shift to services and make other "uncomfortable changes". But you never make any case
    that Open Source is good for vend
    • Hi Andy,

      Did I really say it was HP's 40% profit margin?

      The Open Group is a mixed vendor-and-customer organization, and one that I can't see is dominated by the vendors.

      I think you need to remember that vendors exist to serve customers. If they don't do that as well as possible, they should fail and go out of business. That is what capitalism is about.

      Bruce

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @03:10PM (#6534977)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • To challenge Bruce's "engineering over marketing" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ilan Volow ( 539597 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @03:59PM (#6535465) Homepage
    The reason why Open Source user interfaces are so bad is because the entire Open Source movement is engineer-centric, and most engineers (especially Open Source ones) are incredibly clueless when it comes to understanding and being empathic with the non-technical users who are using their software.

    For years people in the HCI field been screaming at open source engineers to design the UI before the code is written, because there are things that pop up in the UI design process that have lower-level ramifications that engineers don't usually consider when they go the code-first approach. If these issues aren't taken care of immediately and much code is written, the engineers will be loathe to change something just because it makes the software more usable, and the result is that you've got usability problems that take years to fix (if they ever are).

    The response we typically get when we tell the engineers they need to come up with the user interaction before major code is written: "You obviously don't understand the Open Source method".

    While I am all for OSS, I fail to see how giving engineers even more power will make the situation any better.
    • The reason why Open Source user interfaces are so bad

      Open Source user interfaces usually trade ease of use for power. Many of them aren't bad, they're merely built to different design specifications.

      One of my few projects is a program which has a mpg123-like UI, but handles a wide variety of music files. I'm sure if UI engineers designed it, they would come up with something like WinAMP or Windows Media Player; but mine works from a batch file or console, and works easier for me.

      For years people in the
  • Ya this is off topic, but i think this is important to Open Source.

    How does one go about getting Tux models?

    I have started a project on sourceforge called Sound Orgy. I am rendering the logo in povray. I was wonder if there were any povray models of tux out there that I could use in my logo? (while my project is cross-platform, i'd like to promote the fact that it is developed for Linux).

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