Máirín Duffy will be presenting
a paper on design in the free software community at the upcoming ACM
SIGCHI conference. That paper has been posted as a
12-page PDF file, and she is looking for feedback. It’s an interesting
read from somebody who has been very effective at getting things done in
that environment. “Contributors in FLOSS projects, among
whom the majority are volunteers, come to the project with
different and sometimes conflicting visions and goals.
The absence of a central driving vision is challenging to a
designer. It is necessary in design practice to balance the
needs and requirements of different stakeholders, but it can
be substantially more difficult to do so in a FLOSS project
where the very goals of the entire project itself may not be
agreed upon.“