Quote:
Originally Posted by wacomme
A similar situation has happened in the world of cycling. Golden Cheetah (GC) is a freeware program used for tracking and creating training metrics to cyclists using power meters as instruments in their training regime. The GC program competes with a paid program that's the industry standard. However GC was created by a bunch of programmers, and the ease of use just isn't there (not unlike the tool for Kindle). I'm starting to help the GC programmers write help files to explain the components and use of the GC modules and metrics. This way new users don't have to fumble through numerous discussions and readme files to understand how the program works.
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Part of the problem is, as you describe, that the average programmer isn't good a making their programs user friendly. However, with DRM stripping an additional issue is that writing and distributing the tools is illegal in the US (it isn't necessarily illegal to use the tools, but it is always illegal to write them). So it has taken a while to put together a team willing to do this on a continuing basis. Is writing a DRM-stripping README also illegal in the US? My guess is that no one would be convicted for doing so, but someone could be charged and a defense would be expensive and a major life complication.