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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: 0s | 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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1. miki123211 ◴[31 Oct 25 08:42 UTC] No.45769691[source]▶
To design a good user interface, you need a feedback loop that tells you how people actually use your software. That feedback loop should be as painless for the user as possible.

Having people to man a 1-800 number is one way to get that feedback loop. Professional user testing is another. Telemetry / analytics / user tracking, or even being able to pull out statistics from a database on your server, is yet another. Professional software usually has at least two of these, sometimes all four. Free software usually has none.

There are still FLOSS developers out there who think that an English-only channel on Libera.chat (because Discord is for the uneducated n00bs who don't know what's good for them) is a good way to communicate with their users.

What developers want from software isn't what end users want from software. Take Linux for example. A lot of things on Linux can only be done in the terminal, but the people who are able to fix this problem don't actually need it to be fixed. This is why OSS works so well for dev tools.

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2. user205738 ◴[31 Oct 25 21:55 UTC] No.45777136[source]▶
Those who have been using Linux for a long time have very useful terminals with syntax highlighting, auto-completion, typo correction and many other bells and whistles.

In addition, muscle memory has been developed and there is experience.

They don't realize that newbies don't have any of this, and it's very inconvenient to type commands in the terminal without it. You may not be able to copy and paste them the way they are used to (right mouse button or Ctrl-V)

The terminal in linux makes people hysterical and angry.

The problem could be partially solved by adding auto-completion and auto-correction to the default iso.