Gus Wirth wrote:
Todd Walton wrote:
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Open Source Developers vs Commercial Developers, by Anonymous Coward
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=604933&cid=24071053
How is it possible that open source developers have been working on
KDE for a decade now and they still can't come up with something
remotely polished as Win2k was years ago?
And something that just isn't in the same universe as OS X?
Why do the UI elements and widgets look like they are straight out of
the damn stone age? Putting Aqua side by side with KDE makes it look
like KDE is some sort of college computer graphics programmer art.
Why the hell can't the most basic UI and font spacing be handled.
Isn't there anything like the automated snap to grid UI layout tools
like Interface Builder?
You could sit down with a Mac or Windows machine and a Linux box
running KDE and come up with thousands of stupid little,a nd boring to
fix, problems in KDE that could be addressed and fixed TODAY?
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Give me a billion dollars and I'll solve the problem.
Not without pissing off most of the community that currently uses and
develops KDE. At which point, would it still really be KDE?
I would argue that the desktops are as good as they have to be given the
current user and developer base. There are some technical and some
cultural issues holding the desktops where they are.
First, something like KDE is effectively supporting *two*
interfaces--not one. You will pry the command line out of our cold,
dead, collective hands. That takes up programming time. So, any
extremely pretty tool that doesn't have command line is effectively
dead. I do not consider that a bad thing--just try controlling the
wireless on OS X from a command line, for example. Or, see Linus
Torvalds' nerd rage about not being able to configure "random task X" in
Gnome.
Second, since most Linux users are fine with the command line, there is
far less pressure to improve certain GUI tools. If the wireless
configurator doesn't work (and it almost certainly doesn't), I'm going
to drop to the command line and bypass it. Contrast with Windows where
if the wireless configurator fails, that's the end of the line--you have
no wireless, get over it. That means that Microsoft has a *lot* of
pressure to get the wireless configurator widget right that Linux
doesn't have.
Third, your installed base is used to a certain way of doing things. If
you blow that out of the water too many times, they are likely to walk away.
Fourth, artistic talent expects to be *paid*. Good designers are rare
and valuable. Think how long Linux effectively was tied to the free
fonts from Microsoft, of all people, and how long it took until RedHat
*finally* completed a replacement (2007-Liberation fonts). Good icons
are going to have a similar issue. Just try to find a nice vector
"Thumbs up" or "Thumbs down" icon. Almost all clip art has a license
fee. Where is the incentive for artists to donate their work to
open-source?
Finally, creating a SNAZZY(tm) interface is not necessarily worth the
effort. Will a SNAZZY(tm) interface gain users? Developers? Will
people change operating systems? How much work will it be?
-a
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