Three stories/events that have created a fair amount of buzz around the Blogosphere lately:
OSS Software is Too Hard for Non-Geeks to Use
Written by Eric S. Raymond, this rant was inspired by Raymond’s own efforts to print from a (Linux) computer to a printer connected to another Linux box on his own network.Hilarity (not) ensued.
His basic message was that OSS software basically sucks when it comes to helping newbies (or, as in this case, experienced Unix Jocks). If people expect Linux to work on the desktop, Wizards and so on have to work as an average user would expect.
Bill Gates Stumps for More CS Majors
The richest man in the world made a tour of major CS colleges recently, trying to drum up interest in CS. Enrollments in CS have dipped over the last few years.Dave Winer blames the MS juggernaut for killing interest by killing competition; MS’s Scoble, of course, disagrees.
Both have interesting things to say about this issue.
Search Wars intensify
Dan Gillmor takes Yahoo to the woodshed for hiding paid inclusion in newly released search; Jeremy Zawodny rebutts. Update: Tim Bray – someone who knows search – chimes in. Hint: He’s skeptical of Yahoo’s direction.
To me, one single thread runs through all these issues: Information Technology – which, more and more each day, is rapidly becoming inseparable from Internet Technology – is growing up.
These are all valid issues to bring up; these are all growing pains.
We’re going to see a lot more of these types of issues in the near future; some are going to be bloody battles. And not all will end well.
In a follow-up to his OSS Rant, Raymond published some letters he had received from users re: this subject.
One of the most interesting comments to this follow-up was posted by an anonymous reader:
I think the whole community needs to step back for a while and determine just what exactly Linux wants to be.
This whole premise of easy-to-use yet powerful software is flawed. A powerful tool necessarily involves some training for the user…Open source has always been about power and flexibility…If you want to serve the ends of power and flexibility, you cannot also serve the end of ignorant users. No other industry in the business of making powerful tools will dispute this fact…The real problem here is that Linux no longer knows what it wants to be. It wants to conquer the world somehow – to serve best the needs of both grandmothers on AOL and researchers at physics labs.
This user basically argues for keeping Linux complex so no power is sacrificed. Agree or disagree with what he writes, it’s a compelling question.
Where does Linux want to go today?