I had a strange conversation yesterday with a teacher who basically said that free software sucks because of usability issues, and that he'll refuse to teach Pure Data because Max is vastly superior at the cognitive level. The segmented patch cord functionnality seems to be of major importance to him. He also seemed quite revolted by the installation process of the OSX version. So to him, the whole idea of free software is simply irrelevent. This man (who call himself an anarchist, go figure) is telling all those young people that they must pay a fortune to get a fancy Mac and a Max/MSP/Jitter licence.
I'm the only one in my community to use free software for multimedia production. I'd really like my people to use free software, but they simply don't want to, because the very second they are in touch with "no so easy to use" softwares, they almost puke. How could we make PD better so these people would agree using free software? I stopped using Max because of its restrictive license, and I prefer PD to jMax because it's lighter and faster.
Most of us don't need fancy segmented patch cords and graphical objects with a puffy look, but can we focus a little bit on the graphical interface issues? I need those Mac addicts to use PD. I like being in touch with people on this list, but I also need real people (those I get in touch with everyday) to use the same tools than me.
-- Marc