schlitt.info - php, photography and private stuff
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:Author: 		Tobias Schlitt
:Date:			Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:29:46 +0100
:Revision: 		1
:Copyright:		CC by-nc-sa


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A critical view on open source
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:Description:
    Michelle Levesque, a scientist at the Citizen Lab of an Kanadian
    University took a deeper look at a bunch of open source projects. 

Michelle Levesque, a scientist at the `Citizen Lab`__ of an Kanadian
University took `a deeper look`__ at a bunch of open source projects. 

The key sentence "It's my Open Source project and I'll code what I want to."
displays a common problem (is it?) of open source software projects. Most
software developed by an open source community is initiated and supported only
by developers and there for only intended to be used by developers. If the
project comes to a stage where it gets used by endusers (e.g. KDE, Gnome,
OpenOffice.org,...) the developers have to take care of them, too. This has to
result in what the article linked above states in the 5 most common issues:

- User interface design
- Documentation
- Feature-centric development
- Programming for the self
- Religious blindness

The analyses states very well, which problems open source software faces, if
they come to an end-user-near stage. Most developers give a shit on the user
interface of their application and what a technically unexperienced user
expects from it. IMHO this issue is not so present in the above stated
projects (KDE, Gnome, OOO) but in many other tools, especially on Linux.

Documentation is another fairish point. Developers are used to dig through
masses of mailinglist archives and read tons of technical docs to find a
solution for the problem they have. But is an end user??

But `take your own picture`__ on what Michelle has experienced in open source
projects and feel free to leave a comment here. I believe, that mainly the
documentation is a huge issue the community (and for example PEAR) has to face
if their products should become competitive. If they don't, leave everything
as is, but is that the sense of our work?

.. __: http://www.citizenlab.org/

.. __: http://www.citizenlab.org/opensource/

.. __: http://www.citizenlab.org/opensource/


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Comments
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-  at Tue, 20 Apr 2004 05:00:24 +0200

  Who is Michelle? By just reading the article, I can see this lady has no
  real world experience at all. I even doubt she is a “scientist�,
  because I do not think she had done enough research in the paper. For me, it
  was just a waste of time to read this paper.