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[Sheflug] Bloatware (was Re: NHS privatisation + IT)
>>>>> "Alastair" == Alastair Donlon <adonlon [at] netsoc.ucd.ie> writes:
Alastair> On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 11:21:52AM +0900, Stephen
Alastair> J. Turnbull wrote:
>> But that's exactly rms's point of principle. Anybody can
>> unbloat the software because the source is open.
Alastair> True. However, the practicalities of producing free
Alastair> software are not always as simple as rms makes out.
No question, for the reasons you wrote.
Alastair> I'm not really trying to make this a free/non-free
Alastair> thing.
Well, writing software on a limited budget tends to lead to bloat. I
forget who wrote the words, but there's a famous aphorism "I'm sorry
this letter is so long; had I more time, I would have written less."
The thing about free software is that people who _need_ non-bloat
_now_ can produce it themselves by refining out the bloat.
Alastair> Bloated software is bad, no matter whether your software
Alastair> is free or not. It's a software engineering issue.
Ie, an economic issue. Do you invest now in non-bloated software,
which will (if you survive) give you a lasting advantage in the drive
to improve and maintain, and probably less buggy in the short run? Or
do you just push the fscker out the door, and grab the revenue while
the market window is open?
Since much free software is not directly concerned with grabbing
revenue, it provides some opportunity for writing unbloated software,
as opposed to debloating already written software.
Also, if bloat is an issue with the "customers", free software is
guaranteed to provide the correct incentive to unbloat in the first
place.
Alastair> Fair point, but just because there are a few rotten
Alastair> apples, it doesn't mean that the whole barrel is
Alastair> spoilt. I'm sure there are plenty of third world
Alastair> countries where corruption isn't endemic or,
Would that that were so. Alas, there's clear evidence that corruption
leads to stagnation, and stagnation to corruption in a vicious cycle.
It's not a racial or cultural thing, I believe, although the
correlation of third-world-ness to race and culture is high. But we
can observe exactly the same phenomenon in American cities.
Alastair> Most importantly, if the option isn't given then it
Alastair> can't be taken up.
I don't know if it's a good idea to "give them the option" in the form
of debloated software. It would be preferable if they develop their
own "debloating industry"---which Redmond could not compete with!
But at root we agree, there should be options. My kudos to Richard
for his consistent efforts to put real computing into the schools.
re: Apache et al.
Alastair> they could do with is a good user interface, for the
Alastair> general public, to make them more easily accessible. A
Alastair> gentler learning curve is going to attract more people,
Alastair> at least some of whom will want to get to the power
Alastair> lying underneath and who'll go on to learn the base
Alastair> tool.
TeX maybe. I don't want a user-friendly interface to Apache, not at
the NHS where some untrained well-meaning fool will use it to export
my medical records to the world.
Alastair> Speaking of user interfaces to TeX, has anybody used LyX
Alastair> recently? I haven't looked at it in a coon's age, and
Alastair> would be interested in hearing if it's improved at all.
It's great for writing letters and stuff. So is AUC-TeX ;-) I don't
use LyX, but only because I need the full power of LaTeX for the
majority of my writing, and so the AUC-TeX keystrokes are all fresh in
my memory. Changing to LyX for the things it does excellently would
break my rhythm.
I wouldn't use it professionally for the same reasons I wouldn't use
Wart. Documents need to be designed as a whole, not "sequentially
output to the page."
>> People like knowing that their HTML is an impenetrable mess.
Alastair> I have to disagree here. Very few people
Alastair> (i.e. management types, who control the pursestrings)
Alastair> look at the underlying representation. Most of them
Alastair> don't even know that HTML files are stored as text, or
Alastair> that HTML has got something to do with the web (or
Alastair> internet, as they call it).
I was joking, of course. But what you write is not so different.
They want to preserve their ignorance, rather than obfuscate the
essential simplicity of what they're doing (paying for).
>> As usually, you need to fix the people before you can give them
>> appropriate technology.
Bad wording.
Alastair> I don't think that people need to be 'fixed', they just
Alastair> need to be given the experience of superior
Alastair> applications. Very few people are ever given the chance
Alastair> to leave the cozy environs of MSOffice, or else the
Alastair> alternatives always make them want to shrink back to the
Alastair> devil they know rather than the one they don't.
I don't know many people who do want to leave the cozy environs of
MS-Office. They do want computers with a user interface as simple as
the TV set. I don't think they would admit the superiority of TeX for
their purposes even if the UI were as simple as MS-Office; they would
just see it as six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. They generally
think MS-Office _is_ a superior application; it certainly has a
million features.
The problem is social systems (organizations) that don't allow those
who do want to break out to do so, and to profit by it.
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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