Re: Another try to get a response

[Leonard Mada <discoleo gmx net>]

Dear all,

Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 14:07 -0800, John Leonard wrote:
>
>
>   
> > I am inclined to agree with you on this issue. The problem as I see it
> > is that the open source community consists of a lot of fantastically
> > clever programmers, but few designers and even fewer technical authors
> > who can put together decent documentation (especially in several
> > different languages). 
> >
> > Worse, it is considered a rite of passage to have to trawl through
> > hosts of poorly designed websites, post to forums for answers that you
> > don't understand when you get them, and to learn the terminology
> > before you can get going. This is fine if you are technically
> > inclined, not so good if you are the average Joe whio is just trying
> > to get a job done.
> >
> >     
>
> There is a large business community that is happy to help you with your
> MS Windows problems for a fee. The size of that community and the very
> visible advertising for it clearly indicates (to me at least) that there
> are lots of problem even with non-open source programs.
>
> So if "average Joe" has a problem with an open source program, why
> doesn't he hire somebody to talk them through those installation or
> other problems. I am pretty sure that you could find somebody
> knowledgable for the appropriate fee.
>   

I recently came to see Linux phased out as a webserver from an otherwise 
open-source friendly business (and by the way Netcraft shows a similar 
trend), because:
- the cost of MS Windows Server 2003 is ~ $ 800
- the price of a good Linux administrator is > $2.000/month even in my 
less-developed country
- most people know how to boot windows and how to log on to windows, 
what is the proportion that knows this on Linux?
[This fact is relevant, because we employ customer support, and those 
people are likely to be available over the clock, so they are onsite 
when a server problem occurs. Having to pay a Linux-expert beyond the 
customer support team, which is available over the clock, is a complete 
waste of money.]
- I had to allocate 3 persons for 1 week to install Firefox 3.0 on an 
older Ubuntu, and the persons had some knowledge of Linux (albeit 
non-experts in Linux, but they were all web-experts; sorry, but 
technologies have shifted)

Until open-source learns to come a quantum leap forward with 
user-friendliness, I do see dire with open-source. There are exceptions. 
But there is still a long path to go, and especially for Linux and some 
other programs running on Linux.

Sincerely,

Leonard

> There are lots of volunteers that work on open source software which
> benefits many people. Each of them obviously has a reason to do so but
> none of them is required to help "average Joe" just because "average
> Joe" would like it.
>
> If you feel that a web site needs improving then you should provide an
> improved page (note that I am not saying that you need be able to write
> one, you could hire somebody to do so and then offer the page to the
> project.)
>
> Andreas
>
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