Open Source Interface Design Part II
Mr. Raymond has spoken again responding to the feedback he got from his first rant against Open Source Interface Design. And again I can wholeheartly agree with him. The responses he got seem to also support his thesis out there that there are even a lot of "powerusers" of Linux and the like not satisfied with the current state of Free Software Interfaces.
That made me think a little further and I think its time for an Open Interface Initiative. You know there are lots of Designers out there who I am sure would dedicate a little time for designing interfaces.
The biggest obstacle seem to be either you are a programmer then you probably do not have the time to study user behavior and try to figure out how an interface would look like that best suites the user or you are a designer and then you have no desire to care even a little bit about coding (and most hate it - except for some rare few crossbreading exceptions).
So there must be a solution to bridge the two breeds. Something beneficial for both with a minimum amount of friction. Maybe a platform where the programmers post their requests with hooks to the code (like programm xy can do zx please make us an interface proposal). A rating system. Maybe even a "Interface Testbed" where you can throw in an interface and test the functionality without a working code underneath - that could be in itself an open source project. The standard interface or the like.
As Mr. Raymond says its hard to gain any market share for the OpenSource if there there are only interfaces that even the hardcore computer users find hard to manage. Some people want to consume and not think about their computers (the invisible interface).