User Abuse

If I can get the Senior Editor’s attention, this article will be posted at Open for Business in the next day or so. My readers here get to see it first.
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I remember my first encounter with a computer was in high school calculus, an Olivetti Programma 101. It was actually part of our curriculum to program the arithmetic steps for summations. A decade later, I was learning DOS on a military computer. Not the underlying technology; I became the training guru for our Enable office suite. I also wrote all the automation scripts in Enable for the forms we had to process. I still use a copy of Enable O/A on my XP laptop.
I also wrote a lot of other instructional material in the military because my superiors said I had a knack for it. Then I got hurt and left the military. Back home, I started writing a book, but the pile of papers quickly grew out of control. When I got a battered old DOS machine, the writing became more serious. As better computers fell into my paltry price range, I found distracting all the newness of Windows and graphical office suites. Going back to college a second time, I encountered WordPerfect in the computer lab and fell in love. I still run a copy of WP 6.1 on my XP laptop; nothing compares to Grammatik, but I can’t afford the more recent versions.
At some point, I discovered Linux. I can recall the thrill of getting my mouse to work when I stumbled across a RedHat 5.0 book with the disks in the back. I always thought Another Level was a great desktop, if lacking the highly integrated functions of Windows. I surfed with Netscape Navigator 3.06 for several months before I discovered updates. Nor can I forget buying Applix 4, then the thrill of getting my hands on the retail box of WordPerfect 8 for Linux. Despite the occasional crash with it on RedHat 6.3, I thought it was wonderful. Applix 5 was cool, too. I still have the boxed sets for WP8, Applix 5, and RH 6.3, but no hardware old enough to run any of it. Then I became really unhappy with font rendering, and it was a major issue over the next few years. Xfree86 4.x came as a real relief.
I was still working on that book, but progress was slow because I was eternally distracted with usability issues. I knew it could be better, and the Open Source community kept promising it would be better. I kept believing.
Meanwhile, I got involved in volunteer computer assistance work. Not so much tech support but I focused on user training. I could fix hardware and software issues, but I spent the vast majority of my time helping people understand what computers could and couldn’t do. I always took the line people were the reason computers existed, not the other way around. I’m not into the joy of computing so much as how it makes some jobs quicker and simpler. Computers have always been just a tool. For someone aspiring to write and teach, it was my best and most important tool, but never more than just a tool.
Over the years, I’ve discovered far, far too many of those most capable with computers were the least capable with people. In the commercial software world, you don’t have to care about the customer, only convince them you do. When it comes to dollars, you have to respond to user input to some degree or lose those dollars. There are people in management and marketing who understand this, and won’t hire developers who don’t at least work toward producing software they can sell to the consumer. In Open Source, the roles are reversed. The coders are demigods and those who serve as management and marketing are dependent, and much closer.
Meanwhile, the user is totally left out in the cold by both types of software production.
I understand the sociology of the software market, how it can both lead and respond to business at the same time. I understand the necessity of both standardization and competition, and how people as a whole get used to whatever dominates the markets they work. It’s no mystery to me Microsoft seems to tolerate a certain measure of piracy simply because it keeps them dominant. It’s basically free advertising at the grass roots level. Just because you have a better idea in terms of how computers themselves work does not mean it’s better in terms of how people work.
You see, users seem to think support is important. They’ll sacrifice some things to get that. It won’t matter how pure and elegant the technology is if they can’t get help with things they don’t understand. That is pretty much my whole mission in volunteer work. It’s always a compromise; I help the user negotiate the possibilities. For example, commercial software companies often provide fixes it seems they never bothered to advertise. Open Source seldom offers fixes to the stuff that gets your attention, only full replacements — “fixed in the next release.” That is anti-user. Too often, that replacement comes with too much relearning of new habits, or a whole range of new breakage. While that’s true to some degree from both sources, Open Source seems almost hostile to user input on the issues.
Very few Open Source project managers understand the concept of stability of a product and fixing the good features already included. Once users incorporate software into their work routine, they don’t want significant changes. They aren’t computer technicians, and cannot be techies if they are to accomplish anything else. It’s enough work just getting used to computers as part of the routine; computers cannot become the whole routine. Wholesale replacement had better be far better than the previous stuff, and not any significantly different in how it works. Users don’t care what constitutes techie habits. They want technology harnessed to their habits. They’ll compromise, but frequent wholesale changes is not compromise, it’s user abuse.
Open Source is the worst about that sort of abuse. Too often intermediaries (distributions) have full replacement control serving entirely different agendas from both the developers and users. Getting the projects to talk to distros is nearly impossible, except when they both agree you have to replace everything. In addition, it’s not just backward compatibility, but there are the maddening complications of getting a new version without having to change everything else. I can replace something the size of Nano editor without much trouble, and older libraries compile newer versions for quite some time moving forward, but the whole desktop? Moreover, the entire system of Linux software provision shifts constantly with vast numbers of players, so that trying to keep track of it is impossible if I am to have any time left for helping people, which is the whole point.
Right now, the very most stable distributions aim only at the corporate server market, not the user desktop. Why do you think people still keep trying to run MS Office 97 on their newer versions of Windows? What they use most needs to change least once it does a respectable job of meeting their needs. It’s the same reason MS Security Essentials is now a dominant anti-malware product; it’s the least intrusive while getting the job done. You simply cannot make high security a priority if it’s too much work. If you want people to use the stuff, keep it within their attention channels. Otherwise, stop pretending the world needs what you have.
It’s bad enough the commercial world is loaded with anti-user behavior. For some years, I’ve used the free email service offered by GMX.net, based in Germany. Excellent stuff and support is great, if you don’t mind chatting with them in German (I don’t mind). I’ve only needed support twice over the years. So why does their UK/US branch, GMX.com, stink so badly? You can get a free account, but the service can be very unreliable, and support response is almost non-existent. They seem to have taken a cue from Yahoo on this, but without the advantage of being so popular and not nearly so usable. There are others; Sega seems to hate their customers, and Sony Entertainment tried to defend their rootkit ploy. Yes, the gods of commerce too often want that total control which intrudes deep into the user’s personal life. Still, if it gives them what they want, people will use it.
The accountability for commercial software comes in the transaction of sales. The consumer has leverage. Accountability in Open Source depends entirely on the random character development of the folks who write the code. The user has no leverage. You count yourself lucky if the worst you get from someone is, “Write the code yourself. I don’t care what you want.” If we could write our own code, we’d have no use for your project, Sir. The problem comes when the common trend of development departs significantly from user need and expectation. Even when Open Source developers decide to listen, too often they leave themselves open only to those who already love the same things. It’s almost incestuous in that sense, because common users find the whole system utterly closed to them. The developers and fanboys are in their own world. The barriers to entrance are excessively high, and the insiders become prickly when users aren’t willing to invest that much. Insiders don’t understand that we’d like to use our computers, not have sex with them.
Therefore, we have a very large community deluded into thinking they can sell Open Source on what they value, as if the world should only rightly value the same things. Open Source developers seem to expect reprogramming users should be as easy as computers. It doesn’t work that way, and the arrogant snippy comments on places like Slashdot demonstrate why there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop. Demanding every Internet user get a “net user’s license”? It defines the elitist snobbery that makes Macheads look reasonable and friendly.
Telling me I should be bowing-and-scraping grateful because it’s given away freely, and the source code is open for inspection, doesn’t mean much if I can’t use it. Have you ever heard of Google? They try to straddle the line dividing Open Source and commercial profit. If the service or software they offer free is a pain to use, their advertising share goes down. While Open Source typically is not ad supported, most ordinary users really don’t see the difference. Google has something to lose, but Open Source is by nature wholly unresponsive. Sometimes you can get the developer to respond to a genuine bug report, and I’m grateful for those projects. Some of the project managers actually like people, and it’s why they do what they do. Timothy Pearson’s Trinity Desktop Project merits honorable mention on that score. The good guys are always woefully under-supported.
I’m very grateful for VLC, FFmpeg (which I use on the Windows CLI), GIMP, Notepad++, Cygwin for my CLI fix, Vim, The Sword Project, and many other heroes of Open Source. Each project includes folks who respond, either by fixing things, describing workarounds, or reasonable explanations for things. They are accountable, either directly or through their fan base, which works just as well.
So I still use some Open Source software, but I gave up on Linux. When KDE 4 came out, and the developers refused to listen, I started losing interest. When GNOME 3 came out and the developers became hostile to user input, I gave up. XFCE? That’s where I got that snobbish quote above about “code it yourself.” Minimum expectations of computer users require a fully integrated desktop experience, but none of the other desktops on offer comes even close to that level of integration. There are fans for just about every window manager and desktop, but those people have in common almost nothing with ordinary users. For a brief period, I could sell people on Linux, but that was at the end of KDE 3 and GNOME 2, when it seemed developers realized they had to compete for their place on the user’s desktop. That has gone now.
I don’t care if all the new kids on the block are all about the smartphone interface. There are millions of us yet needing to get work done, not simply consume a stream of bytes as entertainment. Windows 8 could easily become the next ME/Vista debacle so long as there are people who do work on their computers.
I’ve spent countless hours with clients and while you can play amateur analyst all you like about what makes people tick, real people will change if what you offer is actually better for their needs. A significant portion of my clients switched to Ubuntu 10.04, but they refuse to use 12.04. Current Linux offerings are no better on any of the measures users notice, and are steadily getting worse. It has nothing to do with what the developers and fanboys think is good stuff; real users want what they want. I don’t try to tell my clients what they want. I do my best to listen and give them what they ask for, including many things I think are utterly stupid. They are in the driver’s seat; it’s their hardware, time and money. I don’t sell Linux any more.
For myself, I finished the book but outgrew it. Instead, I’ve written several more and published them. My budget is nearly zero most of the time; my hardware is nearly all donated, and the software I use came with the hardware or someone gave it to me. I’m using a significant amount of abandonware, lovingly maintained for download by fans from yesteryear. After testing an awful lot of different software and different methods, I discovered for my own use things haven’t gotten that much better since WordPerfect 6 for Windows. Yes, display and interface have improved with later releases, but actual function for writing is not any better, certainly not quicker and simpler. However, my publisher insists on Word format, so I use OpenOffice as the last step in processing books for submission. LibreOffice is not the same as OpenOffice in terms of my experience, nor the same as the commercial offerings. I did rather enjoy the predecessor, Star Office, and still keep a copy of 5.1 and 5.2. Libre is not easier for me, requires way too much work getting it customized for my needs, and offers display problems that distract me and seem only to get worse with each release — ghosts, misalignments, freezing elements, etc. I don’t have them in Apache-OpenOffice.
Abiword is coming along nicely, might get there in a few more years, and Calligra Suite shows promise. If someone ever makes Kmail so it’s not buggier than all other mail clients in existence, and it’s possible to use it on Windows, I’d love to switch. The concept is marvelous. I’m keeping an eye on that stuff, but I don’t really expect much, because the entire KDE project has been the buggiest nightmare ever to intrude on my dreams. From what I can see, the distance between new features and debugging grows exponentially. Jumping to GNOME 2 from KDE 3 was a real let down, but it was the least painful alternative. Now, all the Linux alternatives are too painful.
I’m through testing Linux. If anyone ever builds something like INX and keeps it relatively current, I’ll make sure I can run that on at least one computer I own. I’m sick of what the graphical desktop has become on Linux, a sentiment I’ve long shared with at least a few dozen people with whom I’ve chatted. Unfortunately, it seems none of us is a developer. Again, there’s always the gap between Open Source users and developers. And I don’t have time to build it up from Debian or anything else; I have work to do.
Sure, I’d be glad to review newer versions of the commercial productivity software I use, but I can’t afford them. I’ll stick with what does the job for me, and I have an awful lot of stuff I need to write.