HOLD ON A MINUTE
Linus Torvalds wants to make Linux more usable. Well according to an article on CNET. This should spark an interesting debate inside of the Linux community, as part of the community is bound to share the view held by Jeremy Allison, leader of the open-source Samba project, that the kernel is the most important thing to Linux. This is a radical shift in thinking for much of the development community. It requires the shift in development from improving the technology, to developing technology that enables people to accomplish tasks.
Recently at the San Jose Technology museum celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the IBM PC, Mitch Kapor, founder of the EFF and Lotus, pointed out “that despite an installed base of 500 million PCs worldwide, usability was a major block to wider adoption of technology; he warned that if the PC doesn’t get easier to use, a newer, simpler technology could replace it.” It reassures me that even the leaders of the technology industry realize that the PC is a communications platform, and we should attempt to make it usable. However I often wonder if Mitch is the lone business man in this crusade.