Posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
The Stack: Encouraging Adoption Through Ease of Use
Linux Insider
Open source application developers shouldn’t rely on users’ willingness to jump through hoops. An app may be less expensive and have other advantages over the competition offered by mainstream vendors, but it’s not likely to succeed if it demands effort users aren’t willing to expend or expertise they don’t have. When there’s something missing, it’s usually obvious, which makes it easy to reject the app. The difference between mainstream success and utter failure is often in the details. Open source and free software have made great strides into the mainstream, but it’s taken us over two decades to get there. Even today, there are only a handful of big success stories, versus thousands of struggling apps that never see the light of day.
