Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it

Free software usability is the focus of an article on Matthew Paul Thomas's blog. He identifies 15 problems and proposes solutions to each. "With volunteer projects, though, any incentive is much weaker. The number of users rarely makes any financial difference to developers, and with freely redistributable software, it's near-impossible to count users anyway. There are other incentives — impressing future employers, or getting your software included in a popular OS — but they’re rather oblique."

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