[Sigia-l] Open Source Usability -- curable?

[Peter Trudelle]

Listera wrote:

>That's why I put an asterisk next to Firefox. It has had access to more
>resources than most OOS apps. But, by the same token, unlike Firefox, its
>various Netscape-drived cousins have demonstrated quite lousy UCD
>tendencies, which makes Firefox all the more interesting.
>
Then you may be interested to know that the Netscape ancestors reflect 
nearly all of the professional design/usability input. (I'm reminded of 
Jared Spool's talk last week at BayCHI, where he asserted that UCD is 
such a poor investment in large-scale development that web sites 
investing the most have the worst usability.)  However, they also 
reflect nearly all of the bu$ine$$ input too, and those influences had 
the final say.  IMO, one of the most significant things that Mozilla has 
done with Firefox et. al. is to reject most of the things that were 
added by Netscape/AOL in attempts to generate revenue. 

>The empirical evidence suggests that (despite formulaic wishful thinking and
>posturing) the professional design community and OSS programmer community
>haven't exactly cooperated in any meaningful manner. 
>
Many designers have tried, few succeeded.

>I don't quite see the design community voluntarily becoming adjunct to a process they have little
>control/influence over without pay.
>
You might be surprised at how little control/influence a paycheck can buy.

Peter