The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story (catb.org)

Posted Feb 27, 2004 21:02 UTC (Fri) by mmarq (guest, #2332)
In reply to: The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story (catb.org) by mwh
Parent article: The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story (catb.org)

" Get an iBook. Select "Automatic" from the location menu. Plug the ethernet cable in. Access the 'net. That's user friendly "

Right... thats the common user point of view.

But it can also be the opposite to the best solution to a programming problem point of view... and the principal concern of the Open Source developer paradigma is the technical solution for the problem, not ist interface...

Example:
Problem: 1)...find a way to print over the internet, well integrated in
WAN areas, to the point that networked printers alone could
replace the old fax infrastructure.
Solution:- IPP was created

2)... find a spooler and driver interface mechanism that could
work with the new protocol
Solution:- CUPS and Fomatic were created

3)... find several interfaces for different raster engines,
filters etc.
Solution:- Ghostscript was improved and others print tools were created.

4)... created the user interface that users could use to install
and configure this superior printing mechanism.
Solution:- PrintDrake is getting excelent

So i could not see how could have been possible to start with nº 4) and get to a good nº 1.
Its obviously "insane" to even "sketch" define 4) if you dont have a clue of how 1) is going to be... at least is very obvious to me, and i'm not really a programmer , or at lest i dont consider myself one.