Open Source, Closed Mind

This is a rant aimed at the Open Source Software Development Community as a whole. We recognize in the Social Sciences we have no choice but to make generalizations and stereotypes; otherwise, we get nothing done. Every grouping of humans exhibits characteristics by which we understand the nature of the group. The failure comes in seeking to apply any stereotype too tightly to any given individual within the group. The OSS philosophy is a high moral standard in one sense, and a devilish evil in another. The following rant is aimed at reminding the OSS advocates, Linux advocates in particular, of their single greatest blind spot, a major moral flaw:

You don’t give a rat’s patootie about the user.

Again, not every project, not every developer, etc. This is a generalization, a characteristic which rears its ugly head every time I read a debate or discussion over anything which touches on the OSS philosophy. For some reason, people aren’t a very high priority with OSS.

Granted, the major commercial providers of software exhibit an equal contempt for consumers, but at least manage to understand what it takes to appeal to them. Therefore, while MS, for example, regards consumers as the product sold to advertisers, they do respond to consumer pressure demanding a certain degree of change. As far as the consumer is concerned, MS delivers. Not in the purest sense, of course. There are colossal failures, but overall it’s better than nothing. They got there “firstest with the mostest” when this whole thing of privately owned computers got started. For whatever reasons, consumers with the money to spend bought MS products.

Yes, most consumers bought for home use what their employer bought for use in the workplace. Concrete example: In the late 1980s, US troops in Europe were ordering vast quantities of 286 and 386 systems and parts because they used them on duty, and saw the value of having their own private version of those same tools. At that time, it was MS-DOS and cheap knock-offs of the Enable O/A suite, along with countless games, of course. The military exchange stores sold cases and cases of floppy disks when they had nary a single other computer-related product. In many ways, the market was built on what corporations and government used, and MS quickly grabbed the whole market, at least in part because they responded to demand. (BTW, Enable is still in use, and I know where to get it.)

The only reason anyone will leave MS is if something better comes along. Right now, in my computer ministry, I am able to sell Linux to a portion of my clients because it offers something which strikes them as better. While it does eventually mean less work for me, the real reason is because it is in their best interest. They are the reason I have a ministry — the user is king and queen with me. I don’t manipulate, plead or harass them into it. I offer it as an alternative to yet one more re-installation of their broken Windows. Most decline, and I respect their decision. Because I have a laptop which runs Etch (I don’t care if it’s not supported; it’s the best choice for this hardware) I can demonstrate something of the GNOME interface and some of the ways in which it is not too hard to figure out.

Notice I didn’t say “how it is better than the alternative,” only that it’s not utterly foreign.

Nobody in their right mind would complain at the vast array of variations available with Linux. Those who demand uniformity should have no voice. That is entirely and wholly immoral, and I refuse to debate that. The whole point of everything I do with computers is giving people what they need, while maintaining the humility of never assuming I know what’s best. I serve them; I don’t command them. I’m not the corporate software vendor who cynically manipulates the clientele.

Nor am I Open Source, in that sense. That is, I don’t demand they adopt to my personal preferences. The greatest power of Open Source development is the vision of computing as it should be, of keeping things where everyone can see it, contribute, and make of it what they can. Fine. But to demand everyone who touches it have the ability to read and write their own code guarantees isolation to only those few with time and talent to pursue it. I won’t name names, but at least one “owner” of a very large project has tartly told those who asked for a certain feature to kiss his backside. Even when it was thousands of users making that request, and when it was repeatedly pointed out the previous series had this feature. His response was, “I don’t care.” That was a few years ago, and his tune hasn’t changed, and the project still lacks the feature.

That’s his prerogative, but I can’t recommend that to anyone. In my experience, that is the dominant attitude of the entire community. When in their divine whims they deign to recognize a user’s wish, they grant it only if it pleases them, and they were already inclined to do it. If it means in any way something they would rather not do, the requester is lucky to escape without flaming hostility. The current story line on User Friendly exaggerates what I believe is actually the literal attitude of many OSS folks irritated at mere mundane users. If they could get their hands on a nuclear missile, they would use it on someone who dared to want something which so mightily disturbed their vision of pure computing.

It’s a very old observation — a stereotype — that the very best and brightest coders are so good at computers precisely because they are so bad at people. So we have the standard joke about geeks having no social life in meat space. As long as all they do is poke at code and computer hardware, we are fine. Turn them loose in another direction and the world might well be destroyed in a very short time. That’s the way it is. Jokes are fine, but we have to live with the underlying truth. If you like computers, you have to put up with the people who don’t like anything except computers.

But those basement dwelling social misfits who turn out the world’s greatest software would not have found their niche if millions of consumers had not by their demand driven the price of computers down. I can’t count how many projects would be better if the developer could get his/her hands on a wider array of hardware and write the drivers, but they can’t afford all of it. Still, they do have at least one computer and a connection to the Internet. People and corporations with money and hardware to donate won’t come around if the code isn’t something they can use to enhance their bottom line. Without that market, it’s just a tiny handful of weirdos firing zeroes and ones at each other. If you want to advocate Linux for a wider adoption, you’ll have to understand the folks with the money.

So we have a fairly large community of those in between those two ends. It’s a broad mixture of corporate, government and private efforts which results in many distributions of Linux. Each one seeks to scratch an itch no other distro can reach, but obviously the consumer has spoken, because a tiny handful dominate the scene. For the corporations, it’s Red Hat, Novell-SUSE, and a few other smaller players. For the common user, it’s Ubuntu. For all the purists who complain about how those three are perverting the purity of vision, and how those seem to crowd out other things they prefer, I have little sympathy. They aren’t hurting you. The vast resources they represent would not be involved at all if Red Hat didn’t strive so hard to offer what corporations think they must have, and Ubuntu didn’t appeal to the more average users.

Even within those distros, the community carries a large contingent of purists who try to steer the whole thing away from the very direction which makes those distros so dominant. The vast majority of those who put their fingers on a mouse or keyboard don’t care about the ongoing internal debate, and surely don’t want to hear about philosophical issues. The majority simply want a product which matches their interests, and the closer the better. Telling them to kiss your behind because their interests don’t matter means you lose the dollars which make your little hobby possible.

The Holy Grail of Linux advocacy is not standardization; it’s learning to make the consumer think you care. Right now, the vast majority are pretty sure Linux advocates don’t care. They believe you are just trying to jive talk them into something you want, not what they want. I think those users are mostly right. It’s up to the Open Source Software Development Community to change that image, by changing priorities first.

(Updated comments on this topic are here.)