Havoc's Blog

More
text on how usability will never happen in free software.

That article is spot-on when it talks about how usability is more than
adding some easy config tools on top of an existing system. I also
love the accurate point that technical users don’t like the broken bits
either.

But after two years I continue to
believe that the causes of poor free software design are not
intrinsic to the license.

Serious commercial support for the desktop is just starting up, in
about the same place commercial support for the server was 3-4 years
ago. Though we may expect the desktop to ramp up more quickly, primed
by the server.

At Red Hat, we’re building the desktop team around a top-down
design-first approach, driven by professional interaction
designers. We’ll see how it works out. It will take some time before
the first results are visible.

(This post was originally found at http://log.ometer.com/2004-04.html#2)