I thought many times before writing this article because I feel that it will open lots of mouths on me. Before 7 years I was very excited about Open Source initiative and how to help spreading the word and educate people about Open Source. Now I guess the picture is little different than before and people at least know what’s open source and there is something exist called open free source software, but I don’t want to be pessimistic, I see all these initiatives are just a shy trial to promote open source and educate people about it. I guess people should be educated about the Open source but with different way, not by using Linux or Open office but by the concept itself. I am a IT person who love Linux and I guess Ubuntu is a step forward to make Linux a user friendly and much easier, but I still think it is still not ready for the end user and not ready also for all IT people. I am now blogging from my Asus netbook that has Windows 7 pre-installed, if I want to install let us say Ubuntu remix to replace Windows 7, I will spend 1 hour to configure my Wifi, I will lose the mutlitouch mouse pad (I guess it is very important for the netbook) also I will lose the mic and the cam. For regular people, what does that mean? Waste of time and they lost some of the functionalities that came with the netbook. If the user tried it once and had a bad experience with it, it will lose interest with open source and will have bad impression about the open source. Students at schools start their 1st steps in Computer world by using windows and MS office changing this culture needs time and efforts. Changing this culture does not mean, to start making fun of others and pretend that company like MS is evil, all commercial companies are evils and they care about money, we have to educate people about open source philosophy and why should I care before start teaching people how to use Linux or open office. People must start their 1st steps in open source world with simpler approach, like browsers. Imagine if Mozilla Firefox has a market share with 60%, this mean all developer will start use open standard and not commercial closed standard. Developer will use or try to use open source technology or force the commercial company to use open standard or support open source standard.
I guess this kind of start will help to promote the open source more than telling people to use Linux or open office. May be the open source browser will influence people to use other open source products like Linux or open office or php, etc.. and make people think for alternatives other than closed or commercial software.
I’m a big fan of Adobe Acrobat Forms, I faced different cases in my work, other departments asked me to design a PDF form but a dynamic, the content in the boxes can be expended or shrink depends on the data. In Adobe Acrobat these kind of forms called Flowed layout. I thought it will be a tough task to do such thing, but after playing around with Adobe LiveCycle, it was easy and almost straight forward.
