Eh. One thing proprietary software has going for it is clear design goals and the leadership to create a cohesive UX. Open source projects tend to be a grab bag of tools that work well for developers.
Not saying I don’t love FOSS, but there’s definitely stuff that proprietary software does better in a practical sense, whatever else your opinion of it.
That is not a feature of proprietary software. That is a feature of an organisation. It only makes sense to make software for a profit in an organisation, so that’s why there’s so many of those. FOSS also has a lot of organisations, which are also pretty often used btw, but they are not required.
Not having to rely on an approval by any entity is a big thing for people fucking around with stuff. And fucking around with stuff makes one good at that stuff.
I don’t disagree that it is a feature of organizations, but if you’re talking about creating a product that has been designed around a common philosophy and UX, that is diametrically opposed to fucking around with stuff. There’s a place for that and it does improve people’s skills, I also don’t disagree there. All I’m saying is there exists a tendency for software produced by organizations to adhere to a UX philosophy.
As someone who uses Gnome familly applications daily, I have to disagree with the notion that bad UX is fundamental to FOSS software. The gnome apps and shell all follow the same set of UX guidelines and feel quite cohesive as a result. I can definetly see where you get the idea of bad UX in foss though (looking at you, GIMP and Libreoffice)
I’m not saying it’s fundamental, sorry, I should have specified. You’re exactly right, GNOME is driven by it’s Foundation and so there is leadership in place to make sure that the software ends up as a cohesive whole. Software projects that don’t, or that create one after the fact, tend to be a lot less so.
I am a designer with 20 years of experience. I’ve tried contributing to FOSS, but the developers are incredibly stubborn and work purely guided by their own assumptions. Hence the horrible UX on so much FOSS. There are more than enough design people that would love to contribute, but are met with nothing but ridicule and insults.
Counterpoint - if everything was FOSS it would be absolute chaos with no direction, conflicting goals, incomplete projects, and limited oversight… and also lots of inter-dev-team drama and forking.
There’s a very good reasons why people and organisations will pay for proprietary software when there is a free alternative available. I’ve used FOSS word processors before, for example, and they’re okay, but nothing like what Microsoft Office can do. Same with video editing.
There’s a very good reasons why people and organisations will pay for proprietary software when there is a free alternative available.
And there are also very good reasons why people and organisations are stopping relying on proprietary software and switching to open alternatives that won’t lock them up.
Pay somebody else to take responsibility for pieces of your business process, then blame them when something goes wrong - that’s why we have a contract.
Eh. One thing proprietary software has going for it is clear design goals and the leadership to create a cohesive UX. Open source projects tend to be a grab bag of tools that work well for developers.
Not saying I don’t love FOSS, but there’s definitely stuff that proprietary software does better in a practical sense, whatever else your opinion of it.
That is not a feature of proprietary software. That is a feature of an organisation. It only makes sense to make software for a profit in an organisation, so that’s why there’s so many of those. FOSS also has a lot of organisations, which are also pretty often used btw, but they are not required.
Not having to rely on an approval by any entity is a big thing for people fucking around with stuff. And fucking around with stuff makes one good at that stuff.
I don’t disagree that it is a feature of organizations, but if you’re talking about creating a product that has been designed around a common philosophy and UX, that is diametrically opposed to fucking around with stuff. There’s a place for that and it does improve people’s skills, I also don’t disagree there. All I’m saying is there exists a tendency for software produced by organizations to adhere to a UX philosophy.
As someone who uses Gnome familly applications daily, I have to disagree with the notion that bad UX is fundamental to FOSS software. The gnome apps and shell all follow the same set of UX guidelines and feel quite cohesive as a result. I can definetly see where you get the idea of bad UX in foss though (looking at you, GIMP and Libreoffice)
I’m not saying it’s fundamental, sorry, I should have specified. You’re exactly right, GNOME is driven by it’s Foundation and so there is leadership in place to make sure that the software ends up as a cohesive whole. Software projects that don’t, or that create one after the fact, tend to be a lot less so.
gestures to MS products for the last 20 years
gestures to Windows’ disk partitioner
Fair dues, Microsoft managed to fuck that up in spite of itself.
You can have OSS without the F
Foss struggles to get dev time. If everything was foss, we could coordinate easier.
I am a designer with 20 years of experience. I’ve tried contributing to FOSS, but the developers are incredibly stubborn and work purely guided by their own assumptions. Hence the horrible UX on so much FOSS. There are more than enough design people that would love to contribute, but are met with nothing but ridicule and insults.
That has not much do to with FOSS but with the people you are working with. Proprietary software you can’t even contribute freely to begin with
Time for yet another fork
This has been my experience as well but as a coder.
I can’t count the number of contributions I’ve made, many of them minor. I’m talking 20-30 lines of code max.
I can count on two hands the number that have been either accepted or declined for a legitimate reason.
Counterpoint - if everything was FOSS it would be absolute chaos with no direction, conflicting goals, incomplete projects, and limited oversight… and also lots of inter-dev-team drama and forking.
For instance…
source
Everybody likes forking…
You are describing the current scenario where everything is proprietary
That looks fun.
There’s a very good reasons why people and organisations will pay for proprietary software when there is a free alternative available. I’ve used FOSS word processors before, for example, and they’re okay, but nothing like what Microsoft Office can do. Same with video editing.
And there are also very good reasons why people and organisations are stopping relying on proprietary software and switching to open alternatives that won’t lock them up.
Yup… risk transfer
Pay somebody else to take responsibility for pieces of your business process, then blame them when something goes wrong - that’s why we have a contract.
Also just making their employees more productive.
Not to mention the Customer/Service Suppport, that is at enterprise level because regular customer support is … well you all know already.