Piestar

If I had to point at the number one reason that Linux, and the FOSS movement in general, is being held back I would have to say it is a lack of criticism.  There are three main problems when it comes to FOSS feedback:

1. Lack of a venue:
   There is very few places where actual, legitimate, feedback is possible.  The main distro forums do not generally have anywhere that you can talk about the distro itself – at best they may have a suggestions forum buried somewhere but that is generally it.  Feedback is not encouraged, at best, let alone actively encouraged.
2. Fanboys:
   It is very difficult to discuss FOSS without it devolving into an argument.  Present any criticism, no matter how valid or well thought out, and you are pretty much guaranteed to be set upon by one of the (very) vocal minorities present in 99.9% of FOSS forums who are intent on turning everything into a ‘Linux vs Windows’ thread, and see any criticism of Linux as a personal affront.  Instead of being an honest debate it quickly devolves into a pointless argument over semantics, with the words ‘shill’, ‘troll’ and ‘astroturfer’ thrown liberally at anyone who doesn’t support the party line.
3. Insulation:
   The reason used by the admins on the Ubuntu forums for deleting my posts was that the Ubuntu forums were not an appropriate place to discuss Ubuntu because (and I quote) “The developers do not read these forums”.  So the actual people working on the code (and this is just distro specific stuff) do not look at the main community forums.  Considering that 99% of the code in Ubuntu is 3rd party anyway, taken from upstream projects, there is absolutely no communication between the users and the developers. If you actually wanted to comment on something you’d have to track down the developers who made it in the first place.

I have always considered it my right, and probably even my duty, to point out flaws and problems in software.  Speaking as a developer I admit I do get a bit annoyed (and do take it personally) initially when recieving feedback (especially if it is *ahem* ‘overly critical’), but 99% of the time I try to take it on board and as a result the software improves for everyone involved.  Had I not had the regular criticisms I would have had no reason to fix quite a lot of the problems that, when I look back on now, were actually terrible.  It’s incredibly difficult to see the forest for the trees when creating software and feedback is essential!

There is a disturbing level of self-censorship in the FOSS community.  I think this is because it is considered a community project, thus the opinion of ‘If you don’t like it, fix it’ reigns supreme.  The problem is the people who should be listened to are the people who are unable to fix it themselves.  But when they criticise an aspect of Linux the criticism is not taken as a criticism of the code, it’s often taken as a criticism of the development method.

Regular users, usability experts and graphic designers are pretty much entirely ignored.  Using Ubuntu as an example (as it is the distro I am most familiar with) improvements on usability and graphics progress at glacial speeds.  I even tried contributing to the graphics team project over a year ago (the one that went nowhere) as unless you made an actual workable theme your entry would simply not be considered (but that’s another article).

Someone linked me to this blog today, detailing problems with Adobe software.  Sure if I was working at Adobe on CS I would potentially be quite offended by some of the language, but, if I took everything that was said on board and did my best to rectify it would only improve things.  Ignoring the problems and branding the authors as trolls or idiots would achieve nothing.

Windows, and Microsoft in general, receive massive amounts of criticism.  Every single possible flaw, no matter how slight and large amounts simply conjured out of thin air, is pointed out repeatedly all across the Internet.  Commercial software from other developers garners large amounts of criticism which is often incorporated into the next version.

The Ubuntu GUI, which is really just the Gnome GUI, is badly made.  It lacks focus and refinement, it is wasteful of space, pretty basic and more than anything has not changed significantly in years.  Looking at screenshots from 6.06 Warty Warthog, it is pretty much identical now as it was back then.  You can tell that it is not the result of years of refinement as there pretty much has been no refinement, it’s just that it was designed this way and since there had not been any complaints there is no reason to change it.

Imagine Microsoft released Windows VistaME and it looked exactly like Ubuntu does now (and Gnome did not exist), would everyone say ‘wow, that’s cool’, or would everyone start picking at faults, pointing out problems, suggesting improvements, and most importantly: would it be a better product as a result of this attention?

If you do not believe me find me a productive thread on a semi-official forum that has not devolved into a flamewar that involves actual critical discussions of Linux and without a large amount of Linux fans defending the status quo at all costs.

I want Linux to succeed just as much as everyone else, I just want to be able to talk about how this can be achieved too!  Ignoring and ‘debunking’ anyone with a critical viewpoint hurts FOSS much, much more than Microsoft ever could.