I was doing some research on a paper I am writing about open source usability practices when it hit me: Lack of user research is the #1 problem in open source usability

Does the Open Source Model work better than its commercial alternative? This post comes on the heels of one of my fellow Staff Writer's posting the story, "A Modest Idea: What If Microsoft Open Sourced Windows?" And I'm aiming this commentary at Microsoft too but it applies to any company who seeks profit over what is fundamentally correct behavior in the marketplace.

A lot of bandwidth has been wasted arguing over the lack of usability in open-source software/free software (henceforth “OSS”). The debate continues at this moment on blogs, forums, and Slashdot comment threads.

What do you see as the biggest danger to open-source software today? On the one hand, there's still a locus of resistance. Microsoft still maintains strongly the view that its business model, which depends upon concealing source code from users, is a viable and important and indeed necessary model.

The open-source development model can can be powerful and incredibly beneficial for any software development project. Yet, even most open-source projects do not follow this style of development. Today, I want to talk a bit about why this is the case, and what can be done to set your project on the right path to enjoy the advantages of the open-source development process.

Open-source software is an increasingly popular software development and distribution model that may spread further in the face of financial constraints in our current economy. With publicly available source code generally offered without charge, it is tempting to look to open source for potentially significant cost savings in this time of need. But not so fast.

Open source games have historically struggled to achieve the user following of proprietary gaming software, but over the past few years open source games have taken a turn for the better in terms of usability, playability, and generally the ability to grasp public interest. Here is an in-depth list of some of the most outstanding open source games currently released and in active development.

Celeste Lyn Paul is Senior Interaction Architect for User-Centered Design, Inc., organizes the KDE Usability Project, and works with open source projects such as KDE, Linux Foundation, OpenUsability, and Ubuntu.

Most literature around open source focus on using open source software. While the benefits of OSS are gaining increased recognition, some smart organizations are going a step further and applying the Open Source Development Model (OSDM) to solve problems that proved to be otherwise intractable.