For a given value of "popular" of course. There are many open source projects which are extremely popular in their own contexts.
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 8:34 AM > To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk > Subject: Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open > Source > Consortium > > David, > > my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. > > where are the easy-to-use tools? > Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... > > the most significant issue is that no open source project outside > possibly wikipedia is truly popular. > NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. > > My concern is that because the process does not include users, it is > difficult for their needs to be met. > > regards > > Jonathan Chetwynd > Accessibility Consultant on Media Literacy and the Internet > > > > > > in many cases developers: > > have little or no understanding of a 'public' audience. > > actively refrain from user testing. > > These two points can be summarised as "open-source developers don't > care about > usability." And this demonstrably isn't true. > > Different tools are designed for different audiences; emacs, for > example, is > intended to be usable by developers - and it is. Similarly, Ubuntu, > GNOME and > other systems that _are_ intended for regular end-users have clearly > seen a > great deal of usability testing. > > > encourage feature creep > > Do you have any evidence that you can port to to demonstrate this? > > > design to impress their peers.... > > You say this as if this is a bad thing! > > > in some sense consumerism at least gives the end user some authority. > > To a degree, but it heavily depends on there being a free market with > a number > of competing alternatives. > > I'm not an economist, but it appears that, in computing, free markets > generally > cannot form if the interfaces used for data interchange are closed > and/or > proprietary; in such markets, one provider will eventually tend to > dominate all > of the others. > > For example: > > Operating systems: MS Windows tends to dominate (because nothing > else can run > Windows applications, as the ABIs/APIs are myriad and not fully > documented); > > Office productivity suites: MS Office tends to dominate (because > nothing else > can read/write the proprietary file formats that Office uses.) > > To contrast: > > Web browsers: There are many web-browsers: Seamonkey, Firefox, > Internet > Explorer, Safari, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx etc. (because the > interfaces that > such applications must support are well-documented.) > > Web servers: lighttpd, Apache, Nginx, IIS etc. (because the > interfaces that > such servers must support are well-documented.) > > .. and so forth. If there is a free market, then the consumer has > influence. > > Note that in the case of the BBC iPlayer and other similar services > from other > broadcasters, the interfaces are not fully documented - and this is > considered a > feature! > > > as you may know, the web specifications created by W3C are far more > > potent than the mere iplayer. > > I don't think I understand - how (and why?) are you comparing the W3C > interface > specifications and guidelines, which exist to ensure interoperability > between > different implementations, and the BBC's iPlayer, which is just one > application? > > > The issues are similar though there are > > more companies and corporations engaged in the project.... > > Than which project? The W3C? There have certainly been many more > companies and > corporations involved in the W3C specification development process > than that of > the iPlayer! > > Cheers, > David > -- > David McBride <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Department of Computing, Imperial College, London > > > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please > visit > http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial > list > archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
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