OSI Days 2011

Those of us who have assisted someone new to Linux/FOSS migrate to the open source world have heard endless complaints from them about how things are not working the way proprietary applications do. While we can attribute such complaints to ignorance or lack of knowledge, we need to understand that it is this impression at the consumers' level that is changing the world. When the iPod was introduced, it was not the first portable solidstate music player. But what made it click? Simplicity? Elegance? Or simple features? I think it was all of these. Google was not the first search engine—but it is the reigning search engine today. How did that happen? Because of the 'Wow' factor. Imagine, if the iPod kept rebooting, or the search results generated by Google were only 70 per cent accurate… there would be so many more 'Ows' than ‘Wows’. Today, we observe that only a few are ready to try out FOSS tools seriously. Most people try it, and then switch back. We need to provide the 'Wow' factor to FOSS. My talk at OSI will examine the FOSS 'Ow' factors, and explore potential ways to convert them to 'Wows'.