After reading this I started thinking.

Q : Why does FreeSoftware have such lousy UI?

A : Because they can't afford UI testing.

But this is a strange claim. free-software is being tested all the time. This massively parallel debugging effort is one of the things that allegedly makes free-software work. So why doesn't massively parallel UI testing happen?

Maybe the real point is that it does happen. But whereas most free projects have bug-trackers where you can report the bugs, they don't have UI-problem trackers where people can report war-stories of confusions that they had with a particular piece of software.

Maybe the real key is that there should be a place to report UI problems and stories on project sites. Perhaps at SourceForge?


ThoughtStorms: FreeSoftwareInterfaceStories