[acangiano]

Like most open source projects, this has good intentions, good technology, and a terrible design.

> Form follows function.

Apple begs to differ, and they have been extremely successful thanks to their philosophy. Form very often shapes function and it's at the core of a product's usability.

When designing something as complex as a car, form and function need to be equally considered every step of the way.

[lsc]

>When designing something as complex as a car, form and function need to be equally considered every step of the way.

That's not how apple did it.

Apple took an existing operating system that really only considered function, freebsd, and then built something pretty on and around it.

I mean, I'm not criticizing apple; they followed the rules and built something the FreeBSD team could not have built, and most FreeBSD guys I know are pretty happy with what apple did.

If you were going with the apple model for these cars, what you'd do is first build ugly cars that take an expert to drive that are extremely fast, utilitarian and reliable, but licence them under the BSD licence.

Next, have some for-profit company take the design, put a lot of effort in to making it look nice, add features that make it easy for a novice to drive, and then sell the new cars for a whole lot of money.

I mean, it's a great idea, but you need the FreeBSD of cars before you can have the Apple of cars.

[beoba]

Patches welcome.

Also, keep in mind that Apple themselves adopt existing open source projects for their own use. There's no reason a similar relationship couldn't exist here. And the hobbyist crowd they're currently targeting are unlikely to give a shit.

[dman]

I am recently trying to understand what people mean specifically by terrible design. Can you be specific about what you disliked about the existing design?

[nagnatron]

It usually means: "I don't like it".