[HacktionLab] ogg camp

[Ben Green]

Quoting Sy <sytaffel at riseup.net>:

> On 21/06/11 10:34, hacktionlab-request at lists.aktivix.org wrote:
>> I don't even want particularly to be 'included in techies'  
>> processes' so much as
>> to know that design of the most important of those processes are
>> starting from the needs and desires of ordinary activists, particularly
>> those with a lot less techy knowledge and interest than me..
>>
> This seems like a deeply problematic approach to me.

Me too, coders and users are one community. Don't expect to have a say  
in software where you aren't contributing to the community.

I think though Sy that you seem to saying that Free software is really  
good, whereas in fact lots of it sucks. Lightworks is in Beta and not  
even available for Linux. LibreOffice has a sucky spreadsheet  
implementation. Crabgrass is a pain in the arse. Ubuntu is not stable  
enough and Debian is not accessible enough. These are all opinions of  
course, but I'm not the only one with them by a long shot.

Free sofware takes longer to make because we need to find ways for a  
large number of unpaid people to collaborate. Because of that we need  
to build small components which work together and can be independently  
maintained. We also end up scrapping large frameworks because they  
just don't do what we want anymore. It all takes time. We don't really  
yet have methodologies for deciding how to improve these structures  
either.

Ah, if only providing nice GUIs was all we needed in Free Software,  
we'd probably be there by now. Things is, Free Software is getting  
better, getting stronger. We can speed that up by using it with  
tolerance of it's faults and contributing to the development. Free  
Software is not a service.

Woops, bit of a rant there.

Cheers,
==
 From Ben Green