Washington, DC
Nick Yeates is Red Hats Open Source Strategist specializing in business and university relations. He has been called an ‘Open Source Preacher’, however he likes to promote open source pragmatism over blind-faith. He has interest in how organizations implement the open-source-way, and in revealing the ways of the jedi to the next generation. Follow him on Twitter @nyeates or on LinkedIn.
Authored Comments
Thanks Máirín. You have experience in this from the trenches. Your take has more detail and nuance.
A theme I noticed is that of volunteer efforts and a very diverse meritocracy which lead to insufficient agreement on vision and difficulty establishing a common direction. The very aspects that differentiate and enable the bazaar style, also limit it in other ways. I imagine there is something in-between the cathedral and the bazaar that utilizes the best of both worlds.
Thanks for the comments! I ran into a civil engineer the other day who said his firm was using Linux Mint. Its easy enough for them to use and get work done on a day-in day-out basis. I will have to check out Mint.
At the same time, I think it was Mint who had a kerfluffle lately where they said they expected more people to be paying them when downloading, even shaming people who dont pay. They had changed the UI for how they ask for money. Anyway, its obvious that OSS needs more UX. I think that multiple years of feature freeze in order to bring in untrained people, is unrealistic. It will either be done via cash-infusions from companies, or from wholly new projects that have UX-mindset built-in to start.