Warp wrote:
>   One difference is also that the user can have an impact on the development
> of a distro. You can go to the official forums/mailing lits of the distro
> and suggest some improvement or whatever, and there's a good chance that
> someone will actually listen and implement it. I have first-hand experience.

Yeah, I've fixed 3 or 4 bugs in widely-used packages too. (Tcl and Wings3D 
both spring to mind.)

>   I don't see Microsoft roaming through the millions of messages
> Microsoft-related newsgroups and online forums probably have, and
> implementing people's suggestions. Windows is "too" popular, with "too
> many" users, and it's owned by a single company, so it's basically
> impossible for them to listen to all of them.

I'm not sure of that. The whole ribbon toolbar thing was based on user 
feedback. A lot of it is automatically collected, including crash dumps and 
just usage information. They have millions of people telling them where they 
first look for "right-justify text in an excel cell" for example. It's a 
level of data-collection you'd have a hard time supporting in Linux, 
particularly for free. (Except maybe specific products, like TiVo, where the 
company is making money selling hardware as well.)

I never heard of any free Linux products doing stuff like focus groups, 
either. You often get in Linux that which the geeks think is most useful, at 
the expense of what clueless people can handle. Or you get Linux programs 
using the kinds of interfaces that are already well-established in Windows 
or MacOS, like drop-down window menus, toolbars, border decorations, etc.

It's difficult for MS to pay attention to specific individual users, sure, 
but I think they do a better job of implementing what the majority want, 
mainly because it's in MS's best financial interests to implement what the 
majority want in most cases. (Excluding the majority wanting everything for 
free, etc of course.) And they have the money to pay people to do that sort 
of research, when otherwise it would just cost too much for a free program.

(Of course, there's some free software like Open Office that was essentially 
created as a loss leader, where a lot of work went into it that a normal 
self-motivated nerd wouldn't have bothered with.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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