What do you think open source software is missing?

joaca_rj · 2009-11-28 18:47:22

@ karol
I have 2gb of Ram, I'm using 823 mb for the guest WinXP...
I use only Autocad LT (2008), that misses some 3d stuff, but it's much lighter than the normal version...
It works pretty normal, no problem at all...

Oh, by the way, core2duo 1.83Ghz and Intel gma 965 video...It's a notebook...

Last edited by joaca_rj (2009-11-28 18:48:29)

karol · 2009-11-29 02:32:55

@ joaca_rj
Thanks for the info. 2 GB seems reasonable.

Basu · 2009-11-29 02:47:24

Spit polish. There's no actual single piece of software that I miss, but I wish everything in general was more polished. I use a Mac a lot because I love the polished look of OS X. I understand at some level that polish is directly opposed to the DIY ethos that permeates free software, but I think that's what we need. Ubuntu has actually gone a long way in fixing this. The netbook remix looks pretty damn good and is a snap to set up (except for installing new programs where I can't understand what Canonical is trying to do). I really wish the KDE and GNOME folks would come to some agreement about how to skin non-native toolkit apps and maybe build some conversion libraries so that things still look good without needing to fiddle with themes and such. Things have become a lot better in recent years, but I think there is still a lot to be done.

Cyrusm · 2009-11-29 04:16:35

Basu: if by spit polish you mean only the looks of an application I agree, because many open source developers concentrate on the functionality of an application before concentrating on the physical aesthetics of a program. I disagree in that open source programs, in my opinion, frequently add more flexibility with more stability than their closed source counterparts in a smaller program with the realization that aesthetics are not everything. Examples: mplayer, abiword, vim, emacs. all with ugly "ugly" user interfaces, but all beautiful programs.

karol · 2009-11-29 04:22:27

@ Cyrusm
vim is not ugly, how dare you! ;-)

@ Basu
I think if you'd have to pay for open source as much as you pay for Apples, you'd get some nice'n'polished apps.

luceroz · 2009-11-29 04:28:32

I think the biggest thing open source software lacks is organization. Of course this could all be circumvented if there was more of an abstract layer between end user and developer. Although people say it is one of the greatest assets to have end users and developers in the same room, so to speak, I think this will always lend a certain lack of polish to the finished product.
But that's just it, this will never happen. The only solution to this is closed source, that I can see anyway. So for now just take it as a pimple on the face of an otherwise clean development scheme.

It's funny, a linux user never really gets that exited over a minor release, especially since some package mangler is going to install it all (probably without you really noticing). Hell some packages (e17...) don't really get version numbers in package managers anymore (see gentoo's e17-9999 and others). We want the next great thing immedietly, and when we get it, we just want the next one after that, immedietly. We just may be the most obnoxious end users on the planet.
A windows or mac user on the other hand, waits in gleeful watch for the next minor release of their favorite software, and thats usually a long wait. To be honest, I miss that.

Ranguvar · 2009-11-29 04:36:02

Cyrusm wrote:

Basu: if by spit polish you mean only the looks of an application I agree, because many open source developers concentrate on the functionality of an application before concentrating on the physical aesthetics of a program. I disagree in that open source programs, in my opinion, frequently add more flexibility with more stability than their closed source counterparts in a smaller program with the realization that aesthetics are not everything. Examples: mplayer, abiword, vim, emacs. all with ugly "ugly" user interfaces, but all beautiful programs.

I agree -- Free Software needs more polish.

Those examples aren't very good, though. They're Unix power user tools, Abiword being the only real exception -- and even that one's meant to be minimal and lightweight.
I don't give a rat's ass how polished and pretty my command-line text editor is, only how good its keybindings are

Last edited by Ranguvar (2009-11-30 00:06:00)

ngoonee · 2009-11-29 08:50:20

karol wrote:

@ ngoonee
[I don't consider it OT, so I write it here - hope that OP doesn't mind]
Wrt Paul Davis, he seems to get $4-5k/month now so things are looking up a bit for him. Who's to blame if the community isn't able to come up with enough support for it's prime members? Also, there are parts of the world where you can live rather comfortably on $4k/month. You just have to beware of the dragons ;-)
Open Source is a lot like socialism: work as hard as you can, get as much as you need. In theory, it could work: some would eat 2x the avg but work 5x the avg while others would be the other way round. In practise ... People are lazy, people are evil.
Why should they pay for sth if they don't have to? Why should they be interested in GNU / Linux? Because it's free? Hey, I've got tons of "free" apps, piracy ahoy! (Or should I say "arrrrr")
Maybe that's the reason many 'big names' went to work for Microsoft: their dignity didn't allow them to beg for support.

Even 4-5K USD a month isn't much for a top-notch programmer anywhere. I'm in a third-world country, salaries tend to be dollar-for-dollar here with the US (though prices aren't, grrr), and when I finish my PhD studies at the age of 26 I'll be earning that much straight off, with no previous industrial experience whatsoever.

Its hardly fair, since we all (most) exist in capitalistic states, to have a socialist-esque structure. As I said, something that's missing with Open Source in general.

Anikom15 wrote:

Video Editing, Windows Movie Maker works better than all the current editors combined. Now that I think of, why don't all the editor developers band together?

You must be joking, windows movie maker sucks. I can't think of a single editor in Linux that's WORSE than windows movie maker.

Now, if you're comparing with Adobe Premiere Pro.....

JohannesSM64 · 2009-11-29 16:46:24

AviSynth is free software and runs in Wine
Not your casual everyday video editor though. But it's all I ever use.

Last edited by JohannesSM64 (2009-11-29 16:47:24)

Anikom15 · 2009-11-29 16:56:02

Windows Movie Maker does suck. Linux video editors are worse.

About the polished thing. Programs would look much better with common fonts and colors.

fgr · 2009-11-29 17:34:14

tomd123 wrote:

What do you think open source software is missing?

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html

Harlequin · 2009-11-29 20:05:27

fgr wrote:

tomd123 wrote:
What do you think open source software is missing?
http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html

But oss is not just missing specific programs, but there are some structural problems as well. e.g. inter-application communication, you cant have for example a global adressbook or unified mimetypes between gnome, kde *put your de in here*. There should be done some improvments. Or usability and not just copying MS. Openoffice is crap in terms of usability as well as office is. Instead of this we should work out our own, improved concept.

Last edited by Harlequin (2009-11-29 20:06:30)

Obi-Lan · 2009-11-29 20:55:13

Specialists like UI designers or people with expertise of something which program should do. For example Open Office could benefit just for making better UI and features for people who do word processing or exels for their living.

karol · 2009-11-29 21:07:20

I know that the OP asked for 'what' and not 'how', but maybe someone would suggest also a way to achieve the desired results, hopefully w/o <and a miracle happens here> elements. No offense, but wishful thinking and letters to Santa aren't things that open source needs ;-)

Obi-Lan wrote:

Specialists like UI designers or people with expertise of something which program should do. For example Open Office could benefit just for making better UI and features for people who do word processing or exels for their living.

We have Arch Bounty, there are also other similar projects. Why don't 'people who do word processing or exels for their living' chip in $10 or so? UI experts prefer to work for Fortune 500 companies but I think some of them wouldn't mind helping open source projects ... for a fee.

Anikom15 · 2009-11-29 21:59:40

What we need is UNITY. Like I said, 10 crappy video editors != 1 good one.

beroal · 2009-11-29 22:40:43

More payment options. Paypal is not the only internet payment system in the world. For instance WebMoney and Yandex.Money are popular in ex-USSR.

skottish · 2009-11-29 23:44:19

As has been glossed over here and elsewhere:

The open source world needs users that file good, complete bug reports, feature requests the clearly define what they're looking for and why it's a good idea, patches that solve existing problems... user involvement. I'll bet far less than 5% of Linux users ever lift a finger to help make things better, even though many of them will be more than happy to bitch about things not being like they want them to be. It's true that many bug reports and feature requests get ignored or misunderstood and many patches never get into the code base, but that shouldn't stop anyone from continuing to try.

Ranguvar · 2009-11-30 00:07:55

JohannesSM64 wrote:

AviSynth is free software and runs in Wine
Not your casual everyday video editor though. But it's all I ever use.

AviSynth _rocks_, but unfortunately it is not very suitable for NLE.
It can do it, but it creates a lot of pain and frustration -- a scripting language is really more suited for post-processing.

gajo · 2009-11-30 06:36:12

only thing i care about is better support in wine for windows programs, or better free alternatives to commercial software, preferably complete clones, so i don't have to boot in virtual box all the time;
the problem isn't open source software, it's that in most places outside institutions use commercial, windows only software; (i have two out of four pure programming classes in C# this year, and mono just doesn't cut it...)
same thing goes for matlab: octave and scilab just aren't good enough, or well, aren't exactly the same, so you can't really write software in them, even though 99% of the primary functionality is the same

jerryluc · 2009-11-30 08:12:18

gajo wrote:

only thing i care about is better support in wine for windows programs, or better free alternatives to commercial software, preferably complete clones, so i don't have to boot in virtual box all the time;
the problem isn't open source software, it's that in most places outside institutions use commercial, windows only software; (i have two out of four pure programming classes in C# this year, and mono just doesn't cut it...)
same thing goes for matlab: octave and scilab just aren't good enough, or well, aren't exactly the same, so you can't really write software in them, even though 99% of the primary functionality is the same

For matlab you could use python, numpy and scipy.

rwd · 2009-11-30 20:37:57

skottish wrote:

As has been glossed over here and elsewhere:
The open source world needs users that file good, complete bug reports, feature requests the clearly define what they're looking for and why it's a good idea, patches that solve existing problems... user involvement.

That solves only part of the problem though. I think software makers shouldn't make what users ask for, but what they need , otherwise you'll get featuritis. Also proper usability testing, maybe through something like openusability.org.

skottish · 2009-12-01 05:07:44

rwd wrote:

skottish wrote:
As has been glossed over here and elsewhere:
The open source world needs users that file good, complete bug reports, feature requests the clearly define what they're looking for and why it's a good idea, patches that solve existing problems... user involvement.
That solves only part of the problem though. I think software makers shouldn't make what users ask for, but what they need , otherwise you'll get featuritis. Also proper usability testing, maybe through something like openusability.org.

Without trying to derail this thread, I agree that anything and everything shouldn't be included in code, but sane user involvement can go a long way. For example, I've filed at least four bug reports with both FFmpeg and GIMP that have led almost immediately to patches. The most recent one for FFmpeg was patched and in trunk in less than a day. Since I don't have the skills to create the patches, I produce as much information as I know how: complete description of the problem, stack traces, the system that I run on including all the versions of the build system that I used, trying on both 32 and 64 bit, etc. In the case of the GIMP, I've tested some of the patches for them. This included patching, rebuilding, and testing as many times that have been necessary. It's a bit of work that isn't really fun or convenient, but it's the least that I could do for two of the greatest pieces of software that I've ever used.

Obi-Lan · 2009-12-01 17:35:56

Obi-Lan wrote:
Specialists like UI designers or people with expertise of something which program should do. For example Open Office could benefit just for making better UI and features for people who do word processing or exels for their living.
We have Arch Bounty, there are also other similar projects. Why don't 'people who do word processing or exels for their living' chip in $10 or so? UI experts prefer to work for Fortune 500 companies but I think some of them wouldn't mind helping open source projects ... for a fee.

For most of them their employers are giving tools needed, so why would they put their money into anything. They may even have some training for some commercial products like MS Office which makes them less eager to make a change.

Experts may have not energy to do two work at the same time and they may have all sorts of NDA to not reveal things from their work so getting one with no-life and willing to help may be hard.. I think good change would be some big company like IBM (okay they got lotus) or Google (Okay they got Google Docs) giving away some brain capacity. IBM did new Lotus Office which is based on OO, wonder if anything is coming back in form of GPL code.

pillz · 2009-12-02 05:25:31

ngoonee wrote:

karol wrote:
@ ngoonee
[I don't consider it OT, so I write it here - hope that OP doesn't mind]
Wrt Paul Davis, he seems to get $4-5k/month now so things are looking up a bit for him. Who's to blame if the community isn't able to come up with enough support for it's prime members? Also, there are parts of the world where you can live rather comfortably on $4k/month. You just have to beware of the dragons ;-)
Open Source is a lot like socialism: work as hard as you can, get as much as you need. In theory, it could work: some would eat 2x the avg but work 5x the avg while others would be the other way round. In practise ... People are lazy, people are evil.
Why should they pay for sth if they don't have to? Why should they be interested in GNU / Linux? Because it's free? Hey, I've got tons of "free" apps, piracy ahoy! (Or should I say "arrrrr")
Maybe that's the reason many 'big names' went to work for Microsoft: their dignity didn't allow them to beg for support.
Even 4-5K USD a month isn't much for a top-notch programmer anywhere. I'm in a third-world country, salaries tend to be dollar-for-dollar here with the US (though prices aren't, grrr), and when I finish my PhD studies at the age of 26 I'll be earning that much straight off, with no previous industrial experience whatsoever.
Its hardly fair, since we all (most) exist in capitalistic states, to have a socialist-esque structure. As I said, something that's missing with Open Source in general.
Anikom15 wrote:
Video Editing, Windows Movie Maker works better than all the current editors combined. Now that I think of, why don't all the editor developers band together?
You must be joking, windows movie maker sucks. I can't think of a single editor in Linux that's WORSE than windows movie maker.
Now, if you're comparing with Adobe Premiere Pro.....

So you want to provide free & opensource software to the public and community... but get paid a top-notch salary? And where does this salary come from? If you provide a product or service for free, there is no money to go towards your salary (unless people are willing to donate it). Obviously someone with this goal should not be working solely on free software. it's very unlikely that they'll achieve it working on opensource projects, unless they go to work for a company which is willing to pay them (Red Hat, Novell, Google(partially opensource), Nokia(Maemo))

Open source software is missing.... real support from hardware manufacturers! nVidia and ATI are picking up speed, but there are lots of hardware devices that lack totally, or offer only poor support for linux. Wi-fi is still flakey for some brands/models, webcams (i think theres improvement here), cardreaders, etc. I won't complain about fingerprint scanners, though, since they don't always work in windows either =P

ngoonee · 2009-12-02 06:23:10

pillz wrote:

So you want to provide free & opensource software to the public and community... but get paid a top-notch salary? And where does this salary come from? If you provide a product or service for free, there is no money to go towards your salary (unless people are willing to donate it). Obviously someone with this goal should not be working solely on free software. it's very unlikely that they'll achieve it working on opensource projects, unless they go to work for a company which is willing to pay them (Red Hat, Novell, Google(partially opensource), Nokia(Maemo))

I believe the topic is "open source', not 'free' software (free as in freedom, not as in beer). And I believe the whole point of a capitalistic system is that you get paid what you're worth.

This issue should not be a case of developers being told "you're in open source, you should work for free/cheap!" but more a case of users saying "we're getting quality software, we should appreciate those who work hard on it". Financially, and by appreciating/helping them out.

Some equate "open source" with "charity". This sort of mentality will ensure that open source software always lags behind closed source counterparts. Time is money, and spending time should in a perfect world earn you money in proportion to your productiveness.

Last edited by ngoonee (2009-12-02 06:23:26)

Arch Linux

#26 2009-11-28 18:47:22

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#27 2009-11-29 02:32:55

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#28 2009-11-29 02:47:24

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#29 2009-11-29 04:16:35

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#30 2009-11-29 04:22:27

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#31 2009-11-29 04:28:32

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#32 2009-11-29 04:36:02

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#33 2009-11-29 08:50:20

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#34 2009-11-29 16:46:24

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#35 2009-11-29 16:56:02

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#36 2009-11-29 17:34:14

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#37 2009-11-29 20:05:27

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#38 2009-11-29 20:55:13

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#39 2009-11-29 21:07:20

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#40 2009-11-29 21:59:40

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#41 2009-11-29 22:40:43

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#42 2009-11-29 23:44:19

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#43 2009-11-30 00:07:55

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#44 2009-11-30 06:36:12

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#45 2009-11-30 08:12:18

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#46 2009-11-30 20:37:57

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#47 2009-12-01 05:07:44

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#48 2009-12-01 17:35:56

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#49 2009-12-02 05:25:31

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

#50 2009-12-02 06:23:10

Re: What do you think open source software is missing?

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