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World Domination© Copyright Darrell Anderson. All for freedom and for pleasure, nothing ever lasts forever, everybody wants to rule the world. I have read my share of chatter within the free and open source software world about a desire by some to dominate the software world. In some respects a noble idea, but in other respects futile. There are more than 6 billion people in this world, each with his or her own perspective and worldview. Domination is futile, which is why politicians and bureaucrats are so often frustrated—and should be. Still, from the noble perspective, that is, seeking to ensure that software is treated like most knowledge and is freely exchangeable and modifiable by end-users, means that all people must have access to that knowledge. More importantly, that knowledge must be usable. Currently I do not see that happening in the free and open source software world. There are a couple of billion people in this world without access to computers and several million 486 and Pentium I computers collecting dust. Consider that thought for a somber moment. Then also consider that of the remaining population, most do not have access to cutting or bleeding edge hardware—and never will. Many of those people have access only to older hardware—the “junk” that modern westerners have discarded. Yet, to these people, these old boxes are small treasures, their gateway to a new life and a new way of perceiving the world. A challenge to so-called software world domination is reaching out to these non-computer users and old hardware users. Ain’t gonna happen the way things are going. The reason? Usability. Consider what is arguably the most popular GNU/Linux graphical desktop: the K Desktop Environment or KDE. The maintainers of this popular software are blunt at their own web site that users need fast hardware to appreciate the KDE experience. In other words, all of those non computer users and old hardware users can forget about using KDE. Then there is GNOME, the GNU Network Object Model Environment. Now there is a mouthful of geek-speak. A significant argument among users today is how the GNOME developers continue to “dumb down” the interface to the point that the software is almost unusable in many ways. So much for usability and world domination. What about alternate graphical environments? There is Xfce as a complete desktop environment, but that depends a lot on a person’s definition of complete. Most of the remaining graphical environments are not desktop environments but mere window managers. Frankly, all of these mere window managers require a lot of gut-level geekness to configure and maintain. And these people want world domination for at least one-third of the population? People who have never seen or used a computer or have access only to old hardware? There is one thing that the people in the proprietary world of software have done better than free software advocates and that is the focus on end-user usability. The degree of that success is debatable, but nobody can deny the focus and effort. Some people might argue otherwise, but the fact that proprietary software is far more popular than free and open source software tends to answer the debate. Point-and-click is the dominant model and proponents of free and open source software seem resistant to that fact. Read many typical online discussion groups and a common response to computer problems is to . . . compile from source. Huh? That’s like the local auto mechanic recommending car owners rebuild their cars from scratch to repair a bad alternator. Get real. The bottom line is that end-users really do not care about how the software works at the low levels of understanding. Just provide a usable interface. Point-and-click. This is basic human nature. Now all of those people who have no access to computers or use older software need point-and-click software if the free and open source proponents hope to encourage their dream of world domination of software. That means KDE, GNOME, Xfce and all other “complete” desktop environments need to function well on that older hardware. No excuses. If Windows 95/98 and NT4 can run on that older software as fast as snapping one’s fingers, then the free and open source people have no excuse. For more than six years I happily ran Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on a 486 with 16 MB of RAM and a 512 MB hard drive. That included Microsoft Office 6.0 and other productivity software. For conversation’s sake I still maintain an image of that environment on a 512 MB partition on my current system. Nowadays distro vendors brag that a “minimal” X installation is possible with “only” 1 GB of hard drive space and 64 MB of RAM. What did the Microsoft developers do correctly do squeeze so much productivity into such small space? Fulfilling that dream of world domination means some significant face lifts with respect to usability. Seems to me too that there is a huge market waiting to be tapped for BIOS experts to write new BIOS chips for all of that old hardware still being used. Geekdom is not going to win users. Usability will win people. Currently only the proprietary software people place any meaningful effort and focus on meeting the end-users’ demands. And one-third of the world’s population waits to join the computer age in any meaningful way. Don’t tell these people they need to buy fast hardware. Don’t dumb down to the point of being unusable. Don’t expect end-users to spend weeks manually editing configuration files. Just make things work. On older hardware. Finis. |
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