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Title:

Open Source and Design: Ideologies Clashing

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Level:
Advanced
Type:
Solo
Category:
Other
Presenter:
John Eckman, Optaros
Description:
Thesis: Open Source and Design are fundamentally philosophically incompatible. Antithesis: Open Source and Design are profoundly similar in core beliefs and approaches. This talk works to articulate a meaningful synthesis between these two positions.
Silona Bonewald
on 12/8/08
decorator design...
John Eckman
on 12/8/08
The description here fits the word limit, but ends up being quite a bit more cryptic than I intended - I'll try again. The context for me is in trying to articulate why free and open source projects have historically found it difficult to recruit / retain / attract designers as contributors. (Or, depending on your point of view, why open source projects have been so inhospitable to the design-oriented contributors who show up).

Thesis: Open Source and Design are philosophically incompatible.

Open Source is about enabling anyone and everyone to share the same code base. Open source pushes markets toward commodity status, leveling the playing field by making the same technology available to all. Design, by contrast, is about differentiation; standing apart from the crowd and being unique on the basis of creative innovation.

Besides, Open Source projects are ugly, and only engineers can use them. Well designed, beautiful, and easy to use projects have always come from proprietary approaches.

Antithesis: Open Source and design are profoundly similar in core beliefs.

Open source and design are both based in solving problems based on known patterns. Good artists copy, great artists steal. Maybe some very small portion of "design" is about differentiation, but design is much broader than that subset. Also, many open source projects differentiate and innovate - sometimes on ease of use.

Besides, many open source projects are now actively pursuing design contributions, running usability studies, encouraging themes/skins, and working to compete with proprietary software on both "eye candy" and ease of use.

Synthesis:

How can open source projects benefit more from the talents of the design community (across visual design, interaction design, information architecture, usability, and branding)?

How can designers and design communities benefit from the lessons of free and open source software?


John Eckman
on 12/8/08
Perhaps more to the point, why doesn't the comment form on the panel picker preserve or allow line-breaks? Sorry for the lack of white space in the paragraph(s) above!
John Eckman
on 28/8/08
See Doc Searl's latest rant on design: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/it-sucks-because-its-good
Do it today!
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