Open Source und Usability (oder vs Usability?)

Nochmal ein Nachtrag zum Thema Anwender - das dicke Problem bei Open Source - schon wieder von Nielsen bei Builder.AU:

Q: There is much hype in the industry about free and open source software. From a usability standpoint how do you rate open source software compared to proprietary software?

A: Poorly, I’m sorry to say. I think the reason is that it’s biased highly for one specialised area which is the very technical such as IT systems administrators. But Linux for the average user or other open source solutions for someone who is not a geek rates particularly low.

The reason is, the motivation for open source is not because the person gets paid but the person gets prestige. The developers are designing for each other and they are so feature rich--geeks love features--and you get more prestige by adding features. [...]

The value systems are kind of opposite for what average users need and what open source developers want to do. As long as they are designing for other people like themselves it works quite well. But as soon as they try and design for the average person it breaks down and you have to have the more hierarchical project manager, you have to do user testing and you have to do documentation. [...]

The second problem is that open source when they turn to the general tools they tend to be in the line of “let’s implement what we already know” so they will take Microsoft Office and they will clone it. [...] The point being that you don’t move ahead but you have to do something new.

Der Rest des Interviews ist auch ganz interessant!