Cologne, Germany
Acquia Manager of Community Affairs, Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire has a longstanding passion for the Drupal project and its community. Presenting around the world at Drupal and other events helps satisfy his inner diva, which he also feeds with performances as a storyteller, singer, french horn and alphorn player. Tags: Musician, foodie, Drupalista ... Twitter & social web handle: horncologne
Authored Comments
Yes! Any open source project that wants to mature, succeed, and become commoditized, must move from being strictly for the hard core geeks (as in "RTFM! It is all in the code. Figure it out yourself.") to being more broadly usable. Many, like the Drupal project with which I am associated, grow to include passionate, active and high-quality experts in documentation, usability, and training.
By the same token, implementation by non-experts of highly complex software, open source or otherwise, can bring with it poorer-quality, costlier, riskier results. The relative steepness of the learning curve of a given software is in part determined by its complexity. This can and should be ameliorated by good documentation, but it is inadvisable to entrust the inexperienced with highly critical projects in the first place.
Linux, in the form of its arguably most user-friendly version, Ubuntu, is well on the way to being a superior user experience, needing no particular technical knowledge to use successfully for all the normal administrative-type tasks required in most businesses and homes.