Comments on: Is open source winning ?

By: Tumelo Mphafe

Tumelo Mphafe — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:32:30 +0000

Khathuselo Sir, I understand your argument, and while your observations are subjective, they are also true. The truth is like I said, there is a popular misconception that *nix based apps are hard to use, which is somewhat true when looking at the average user. maybe its up to us as developers (Open source oriented) to make sure that the apps developed are user friendly. One observation that i have also made is that because of the nature of the development process of open source apps they suffer a lot of scope creep as anyone wants to add a little feature they think might be useful, at the endof the day we end up with an application that is feature rich but is unusable because they were not designed in at the biggining, hence something like Gimp, what I think is that the open source community should embark on a clear scope definition for the app, as well as a design spec, make it public and people can add the features needed. that way a design or a prototype can be made based on their input. then we can focus on optimizing. what do you think

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By: khathutshelo Ndouvhada

khathutshelo Ndouvhada — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:55:50 +0000

I am a developer and I have used a lot of LAMP based software and even contributed code to some. Played around with Ubuntu for a while and still went back to my XP SP2. I have no issues against the *nix based open source model but I am yet to see the average PC user running to Sourceforge dot net or Freshmeat dot net in a download frenzy.

Truth is, most open source site are extremely hard to understand, by the time you get to the actual files you have cursed the site countless times.

Apart from Firefox, I cant think of a lot of programs that dont require skill to operate. Look at The Gimp, its the popular “alternative” to Adobe’s industry leading Photoshop.

The Gimp is a powerful tool, not anywhere close to Photoshop, but its layout is a mine field.

The .Nix based movement is also responsible for Mono, a .Nix based version of .Net, Mono allows .Nix machines to experience the power and multiple language features of ASP.net.

Truth is, I get more work done in .Net than I would with LAMP. Visual Studio Offers me more, well that is my story and I am sticking to it.

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By: Paddy II

Paddy II — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:33:39 +0000

For shizzle.

Leaving aside the philosophical problems (which I think are large) it still wouldn’t be practicable for open source developers to try to discriminate only against Microsoft. How could that be done? Would a user who downloads the source code have to prove they weren’t an MS suit, or would there be a worldwide blacklist database of MS suits? Either way, it couldn’t be done.

On the other point: Linux is usable! I started using Ubuntu a while back, I’m using it now, and it rocks my world.

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