Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 10:13:23 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> To: Jeff Roberts <jroberts@ashland.edu> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: My opinion about freebsd (fwd) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970711092112.366G-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OS2.3.95.970710234702.30D-100000@warp4>
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On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, Jeff Roberts wrote: > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Thu, 03 Jul 1997 19:07:06 +0800 > From: Jonah Kuo <jonahkuo@mail.ttn.com.tw> > To: jroberts@ashland.edu > Subject: My opinion about freebsd [snip] > Since I can't figure this problem out, I have questions > about freebsd. Is it only a hacker's workbench? Can only the > unix gurus can play freebsd well? Does every freebsd user have > to learn C language? Is the threshold too high to common > freebsd user? We all have to admit, basically, if one wants to > join the freebsd community, he(or her) must know what the irq, > io port, primary, seconary, jumpers are...and so on. Here is one pessimistic view... Occasional cases of altruism aside, the motivation for contributing virtual sweat to a project such as FreeBSD is self interest. People who (a) find FreeBSD useful for their own purposes, (b) are programmers/hackers to the degree that they can (c) implement enhancements to make FreeBSD *more* useful for their own purposes are the primairy contributers to the cause. In usability engineering, a premire guiding principle is to make a clear and conscious distinction between you, the developer, and the user. Every design decision that would be visible to the user must be driven by a clear understanding of the users and their tasks. The developer's ideas of what makes sense should only be considered when it can be shown that it also makes sense to the target user. To (over)generalize, FreeBSD is developed by hackers for their own purposes. In effect, the developers the target audience. It is still possible to separate your own, possibly non-represntative, intuitions about good design from those scientifically grounded in task analysis and usability testing. In practice, I really doubt this ever happens. To the degree that the devolper is representative of the FreeBSD users, this isn't a catastrophe, but it is suboptimal. There are plenty of truly abysmal pieces of unix software that stand as a testament to this. Of course, it is possible that a volunteer project could produce quality software with a high high degree usability by non-programmers. However, given the incentive system that drives these volunteer software projects, I believe such cases will always be rare exceptions, not the rule. -john
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