On 12 Feb 2003, Marc Lavallée wrote:
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.
You know what? He's right! PureData's GUI sucks compared to MAX's! Moreover, jMax's GUI sucks compared to MAX's, and PureData's GUI sucks compared to jMax's (except for speed)!
The logistic problems of Free Software (in general...) look like this:
free software is designed and written by programmers (which is not a problem by itself, it's only a fact of life that appears when analysing the problems);
programmers are not assigned to particular projects, except out of their own interest, or because of a friend wanting a bug fix, or because of paid contracts (usually about specific additions);
programmers are attracted to software that already meet certain criteria of usefulness and adequacy;
externally contributing programmers make source code modifications that often get refused by the maintainers, because: the maintainers don't need the feature and/or don't understand the need for the feature and/or would like the code meet certain additional criteria and/or would like to test the code themselves and/or don't have the time and/or don't have the interest. (usually a combination of several of the above);
programmers often add features for specific situations, by their own initiative, or on behalf of someone else, and in any case, the interested person is enough interested in the feature to be much more tolerant with usability/consistency problems;
users of a piece of software develop a "culture" and/or "language" centered around the software's features and quirks, and are often oblivious to the problems and concerns outsiders have getting into that. (idiosyncrasy)
etc...
(note: Not all free software suffers from the same problems, nor suffer from them in the same ways...)
In any case, the "convenience" aspect often outweighs the "Freedom" aspect, mostly because "Freedom of programming is limited to those who know how to code"... Reminescent of the old saying about owning printing presses, but now more centered on the availability of know-how...
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.
I prefer jMax because the GUI is less ugly.
Most of us don't need fancy segmented patch cords
I don't need them, and have been able to survive without them, but it doesn't mean i don't want them!!
but can we focus a little bit on the graphical interface issues?
YES!!!
I need those Mac addicts to use PD.
I need *myself* to use PD as well !
Mathieu Bouchard http://artengine.ca/matju