What's the current state and future of open source?

[jleemc44]

This has to do with a study on “How home pc users view open source projects”.
The data collected will not be used for publication. Just another research tool.

Thanks.

[insub2]

You realize that the state you gather from that poll are biased? This is the Ubuntu Forums! Also, you are asking for projections. Perhaps a better question would be, "Do you use open source products for home computer or comercial use?"

Regardless, I'd be interested in your study. Post a link when you are finish (if you publish it to the web).

[jleemc44]

[QUOTE=insub2;1822734]You realize that the state you gather from that poll are biased? This is the Ubuntu Forums! Also, you are asking for projections. Perhaps a better question would be, "Do you use open source products for home computer or comercial use?"
QUOTE]

Yes I do! Thus the part: The data collected will not be used for publication. Just another research tool.

Just a tool, not going to get any ideas in my head on the issues baised on the results.

[aysiu]

I'm not answering because I agree with more than one of those statements:

Some open source projects like Firefox will continue to gain great popularity in the home pc market. Other projects like PearPC will not. Many open source developers (like the ones who work on GoboLinux) aren’t very interested in the home pc market. Other open source developers (like the ones who work on Ubuntu) are very interested in the home pc market.

P.S. I've changed your subject title to give a better indication of what this thread is actually about.

[bonzodog]

Open source is going to be THE dominant development model of the future.
Even Bill Gates himself has said that Open Source has a great future, in a recent interview, and those of us at the sharper end of it, and who have been in Open Source for years have seen its exponential growth in recent times.

By about 2015, Closed software will be a rare thing of the past and frowned upon by the community at large. In order to build a successful development community on the Internet, Open Source will have to be the main model of development.

[manic007]

Many open source developers (like the ones who work on GoboLinux) aren’t very interested in the home pc market.

That's a lie! I'm sorry for replying to an old thread. But that's simply a lie, it's verging on M$ level of propaganda!

The whole point of Gobolinux is to make the OS more accessible to the average joe. The file system under gobolinux is much cleaner and more intuitive. I've used Gobolinux on my home computer and you don't need a PhD in computer science from Standford to understand how it works, infact its so intuitive that I rarely had to look at the documentation to get things done! Compare that to other distro's.

Use google. Type in "linux help" and "windows help" and you'll see that there's half as many pages turning up for linux. That might sound impressive, until you realise the fact that linux has a tiny market share and is used by predominately hardcore geeks, where as ******* is used by hundreds of millions of predominately clueless airheads!!

And what are the vast majority of linux users asking for help on? On how to find such and such program, how to configure such and such file cause the documentation is sparse and very little HCI went into the design process (if any). Gobolinux gets rid of the first and helps with the second - all the config files are under ONE directory, all of the executable programs are under another directory (well technically just syslinks to the original's, but its still damn more intutive that the current system!).

It's a lie that linux "just works", you still have to run around looking for funny sounding config files and editing them by hand. And anybody who say's "no you dont, everything you install on linux just works(TM) without people having to edit anything", is quite simply - lying out of their a$$'s. I've installed ubuntu for clueless friends of mine only for them to come back 6months later and ask that I install windows cause they installed a program using Synaptic only to find out that no icon appeared on the desktop or nothing in the "program list" so they had to run around looking for stuff all over the FHS and then have to edit stuff by hand and they dont feel comfortable doing that. So for the past 6months their computer is just how I left it. Its no longer their computer, its become my
computer and my hobby but at their expense and their lack of enjoyment. And no, I dont believe that only "1337" people should use computers. How many of you know the molecular structure of glucose? Well do you "eat"? Should you be forbidden from eating cause you dont know the chemical process of adibatic respiration of glucose into energy using proton transport? No, of course not! Most of the geeks on this planet dont even know the basic structure of the Pentium I architecture! And yet they still use computers? So, no, computers shouldn't be confined to elitist individuals cause otherwise only Bjarne Stroustroup would be allowed to use a computer!

I'll repeat this again - user's *still* and the immediate future will have to run around the FHS looking for programs and config files cause of the "release early, release often" Linus Philosophy. And without a good internet search engine linux would get nowhere! And thats the reason why I like gobolinux, its simple to use and easy to understand. Everything is intutive and if any free OS is going to break the desktop market its going to be some mature variant of Gobolinux - cause its user friendly.

[BWF89]

I don't know if open source will gain a whole lot of ground in the home pc market. People would rather pirate Photoshop and MS Office than use GIMP and OpenOffice.

I don't see that changing in the near future, or ever.

[aysiu]

That's a lie! I'm sorry for replying to an old thread. But that's simply a lie, it's verging on M$ level of propaganda!

The whole point of Gobolinux is to make the OS more accessible to the average joe. If you want to see who's lying, read the GoboLinux FAQ (http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=faq).

Here are some excerpts:
Did you redesign the tree to make it more newbie-friendly?
No. In fact, it was motivated to fulfill the needs of users who prefer to install applications from the original source packages instead of relying on the distribution. That is the main reason why each application gets its own directory: so you can install it from source there and then remove it with an "rm -rf". So, you see, GoboLinux was designed focusing the experienced user who doesn't like things to be automagical. Our scripts merely automate procedures, but they don't "make decisions", and whenever they have to, they ask first.
What are your goals about GoboLinux?
Our first goal is to have a system that we enjoy using, that won't get destroyed by package managing software that tries to administrate our machine for us. Most Linux distributions try to make life easier to the novice user, but this way they are making life much harder for the more seasoned user. We don't claim that GoboLinux is easier, only that it "makes more sense". However, people who use it say that it is indeed easier to administrate, given that it lets you understand your system better (if you are willing to understand it). Let me repeat a couple of these parts for you:
GoboLinux was designed focusing the experienced user
We don't claim that GoboLinux is easier, only that it "makes more sense".

Could GoboLinux be easier for some users? Sure. Is it designed to be new-user-friendly? Absolutely not.

[SunnyRabbiera]

I think the home PC market is slowly going to open source and eventually the market will most certainly partialy adopt it.
This is mainly because of vista, already some of the industrys heavy hitters look at vista as something that is junk...
the only thing we need is time.

[manic007]

Could GoboLinux be easier for some users? Sure. Is it designed to be new-user-friendly? Absolutely not.

New human beings are born everyday, and many older ones dies. The real question should be: Does it have a lower learning curve for someone who wants to use and administer a computer, but has never used one before?

And in that respect, Gobolinux makes so much sense.

I'm sorry if I called you a liar (or if it appeared that way, it wasn't intended). But I'm sick and tired of people slaggin off Gobolinux for stupid reasons! I like it cause I genuinely believe in the long term good it will do. If you picture the (probabaly sterotypical) poor person in africa who works hard put food on the table and their kids through school. To that person time is a luxury which they probably want to spend with their kids and i think its absurd that they should have to choose between that, or learning how to administer their home PC? And this senerios probably isn't so far fetched (now that I think about it). It reminds me of the One Laptop per Child programme, clearly not every child out their want to be an "1337 rox3r Unix admin", some of them want to be medical doctors - which takes a lot of hardwork and time! And in my opinion the current unix FHS un-necessarily robs people of time. Its the reason why my friends couldn't be bothered with it!(and it has nothing to do with them being acustomed to *******s, heck they dont know squat how windows works! ;) I don't think they'd even heard of the registry!)

You're right, the Gobo guys didn't set out to make their distro user-friendly. But I think you're very wrong when you imply its not suitable for the home pc market.

[aysiu]

But I think you're very wrong when you imply its not suitable for the home pc market. You're straw man-ning me to death here. I never implied that GoboLinux was not suitable for the home PC market. I said
Many open source developers (like the ones who work on GoboLinux) aren’t very interested in the home pc market.

[DrainBead]

Everything is a file.

Everything has it's place.

That is the philosophy behind the Unix directory structure and there is not one that is superior to date, that goes for all NEW users of it.

You want to delete an application? Well use rm -rf to do it and you'll mess up the package database, the way to use any modern system is to use the package manager (that goes for windows too) to remove an application.

And if you happen to be one of the few that compile from source, well, then there is usually an unistall script that you can call from "make uninstall" too.

EDIT: This was in reply to Manic007

I didn't vote in the poll for the same reason aysiu didn't vote, multiple options needed.