Editor's Note: Taking FOSS to the Next Level May 2, 2009, 00 :01 UTC (38 Talkback[s]) (7995 reads) (Other stories by Carla Schroder)
by Carla Schroder Managing Editor
Form follows function. First make it work, make it efficient and reliable, and then make it pretty. If you make prettiness the priority, then the whole work becomes irreparably flawed. This is a universal principle that is true for all human creations: houses, vehicles, industrial machines, clothing, books, paintings, music, food-- everything. A bad foundation does not lead to a sound structure, no matter how you pretty it up.
Before building anything you have to have a design, a plan, because if you don't know where you're going you won't get there. What drives the plan? The needs of the user. Oh I know, this is anathema to the "scratch your own itch" philosophy. But that particular philosphy has been misrepresented and distorted into something self-centered, a "If you don't like it then don't use it" attitude, when in fact it isn't:
"7. Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers."
But What Do Users Want?
Building anything is a creative act, and creators put a lot of themselves into their works. It's natural to take criticism personally. But when you make something for other people to use you have to listen to them. If you don't develop a sense for what will appeal to your users then you won't have users.
Sometimes knowing what users want is easy, because they tell you very specifically. Sometimes it is hard because they don't have enough experience or knowledge to know for themselves. When I was geeklancing I spent a lot of time watching how my customers used their computers, and learning what they were trying to do with them. Once I figured out their workflow and the tasks they needed to do it was easy to come up with a coherent plan that made sense. It took both sets of knowledge to come up with a competent computing infrastructure.
Digikam Rocks
To me Digikam is one great example of the right way to steer the development of a complex application. The Digikam team are very good at understanding what a good digital photo management workflow is, and every release of Digikam advances both functionality and efficiency. They listen to users, and while it is impossible to please everyone, I think they're doing a great job. The best FOSS projects have this blend of clueful leadership that has a sound, clear vision, and also knows how to listen to users.
KDE4 and Gnome Wobble
I've been holding back on reviewing KDE4 because I was appalled at the initial outpouring of venom and hostility, and did not want to chance fueling the lynch mob in any way. I am still appalled. There is no excuse for being so vicious.
Desktop environments are considerably more complicated than single applications, which makes it even more imperative to start with a clear design vision and a sound framework.
I'm a KDE fan from version 1. Version 1 was pretty rough, but it was usable and very customizable. It didn't take me long to learn my way around it and become efficient. Before that I liked Gnome 1.4; it was very customizable and useful. Gnome 2.0 was so crippled and inflexible I had to find something else, it was little more than a bloated application launcher. For some years I had all kinds of window managers and desktop environments installed, and switched around every couple of days. I still try different ones regularly, but for me KDE 3.5 is where I am the most efficient and productive.
KDE 4.2 on Kubuntu is my current KDE 4 testbed. In a nutshell, it looks like prettiness comes first instead of functionality. I won't give a complete review here; the short story is it's unstable, inflexible, and inefficient.
"Another way that GNOME 3.0 should change is to completely rewrite what it means to be a desktop environment. Maybe the entire desktop need not be a desktop metaphor at all. The community has a lot of bright and creative people. I believe its time for the open source desktop community to bring the best minds together to create something completely new."
Erp. This sort of talk scares me because the existing KDE 4.x and Gnome 2.x implementations still have a lot of rough spots and things that don't work right. There are plenty of users who would be happy with existing problems being fixed, rather than the dev teams haring off on new adventures. Anyone can do a half-baked job and walk away; is that the FOSS model? Leave messes for someone else to clean up? If I never got beyond a first or second draft nobody would buy my books, and I could not take any pride in them.
A lot of attention is being paid to glitz and bling. It is true that style and appearance matter, and it is usually appearance that first attracts attention. But if that is all there is, and users are not happy with how the software actually works, glitz and bling won't be enough to keep them.
One more food for thought from ESR:
"Another strength of the Unix tradition, one that Linux pushes to a happy extreme, is that a lot of users are hackers too. Because source code is available, they can be effective hackers. This can be tremendously useful for shortening debugging time. Given a bit of encouragement, your users will diagnose problems, suggest fixes, and help improve the code far more quickly than you could unaided."
There are never enough developers or helpers (documentation writers, helping new users, artists, etc.). I hope that users will keep this in mind the next time they catch themselves thinking "Someone else should fix this."
