[OS:N:] Developing for developers and users

This article http://www.builderau.com.au/webdev/0,39024680,39130602,00.htm
received the typical treatment on Slashdot because Jakob Nielsen said some
unpopular things about open source development.  However, Nielsen makes some
good points that kind of echo Eugene Eric Kim's thoughts in his Manifesto for
Collaborative Tools -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/open-source-now-list/2004-April/msg00009.html

Specifically...

 - developers are designing for each other
 - value systems are kind of opposite for what average users need and what
open source developers want to do
 - when they (open source developers) turn to the general tools they
tend to be in the line of "let's implement what we already know" so they
will take Microsoft Office and they will clone it.

We talked about the effects of these problems on Linux and OSS at a
Redhat meetup a few months ago.  The example we used was the
similarity between Outlook and Evolution.  While this kind of
development fills a need and expands the audience, the effects are
temporary.  In 15 years when people are complaining about Linux (and
Microsoft is a much different company), will something else will come
along and we have to have this discussion all over again?  Innovation
is the key to not repeating the  mistakes of our computing past.

Matt Frye


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