How To Fix the Poor Usability of Free Software

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tbm's picture
Matthew Paul Thomas has written a very interesting article explaining why FOSS often has poor usability. He lists 15 problems of FOSS usability along with suggested solutions: "Free Software has a long and healthy tradition of "show me the code". But when someone points out a usability issue, this tradition turns into "patches welcome", which is unhelpful since most designers aren’t programmers. And it’s not obvious how else usability specialists should help out."