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Free software scares normal people

(danieldelaney.net)
917 points cryptophreak | 2 comments | 30 Oct 25 15:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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squeedles ◴[30 Oct 25 16:12 UTC] No.45761639[source]▶
Good article, but the reasoning is wrong. It isn't easy to make a simple interface in the same way that Pascal apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a shorter one.

Implementing the UI for one exact use case is not much trouble, but figuring out what that use case is difficult. And defending that use case from the line of people who want "that + this little extra thing", or the "I just need ..." is difficult. It takes a single strong-willed defender, or some sort of onerous management structure, to prevent the interface from quickly devolving back into the million options or schizming into other projects.

Simply put, it is a desirable state, but an unstable one.

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dayvid ◴[30 Oct 25 16:15 UTC] No.45761688[source]▶
The contributors of free software tend to be power users who want to ensure their use case works. I don't think they're investing a lot of thought into the 80/20 use case for normal/majority or users or would risk hurting their workflow to make it easier for others
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zeroq ◴[30 Oct 25 16:25 UTC] No.45761808[source]▶
> contributors of free software tend to be power users

or, simply put, nerds

it takes both a different background, approach and skillset to design ux and interface

if anything FOSS should figure out how to attract skilled artists so majority of designs and logos doesn't look so blatantly amateurish.

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WD-42 ◴[30 Oct 25 16:37 UTC] No.45761973[source]▶
My guess is that, as has always been, the pool of people willing to code for free on their own time because it's fun is just much larger than the people willing to make icons for software projects on their own time because they think it's fun.
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1. ambicapter ◴[30 Oct 25 16:50 UTC] No.45762137[source]▶
Much larger but not non-existent, people post their work (including laborious stuff like icon suites and themes) on art forums and websites for no gain all the time.
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2. keyringlight ◴[30 Oct 25 17:25 UTC] No.45762571[source]▶
Going back to the winxp days there was a fairly vibrant group of people making unofficial themes for it, although I think that was helped by the existence of tools (from Stardock?) specialized on that task and making it approachable if your skill set didn't align perfectly.