[LINK] Eric Raymond on OSS UIs

[Chirgwin, Richard]

Linkers, 

When I've complained that open source software is too demanding for the
"ordinary" user, a frequent rebuttal is that users should learn more.

I guess, however, that nobody's going to say that Eric Raymond isn't
competent to comment?

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html> 

So here are some gems from something he's just written, complaining that OSS
is too darned hard to use:
>the best intentions and effort have led to a system which despite
>its superficial pseudo-friendliness is so undiscoverable that it might 
>as well have been written in ancient Sanskrit.

...
>The point of this essay is not, therefore, just to beat up on 
>the CUPS people - it's also to beat up on every other 
>open-source designer who does equally thoughtless things 
>under the fond delusion that a slick-looking UI is a well-designed UI

...
>I have better things to do with my brain than 
>clutter it with sysadminning details.

...
>The interface of the software should be all the 
>documentation the user needs. 

RC: it's so nice to have someone say this who may actually be listened to.
The people who yelled at me when I reported a bug - just an ordinary
crash-don't-know-why bug - in AbiWord can't tell ER that he's an ignorant
^!#$ who should be using Linux...

RC