“If you use Mambo/Joomla the way it was intended to be used (big news blocks in the middle, user-contributed contented, ‘fun’ sidebars such as calendars), it is probably one of the user-friendliest things you can get.”

Heck, there shouldn’t be a trade-off between flexibility and usability. Just my opinion.

“That is because ‘the ability to empathize with the end users’ does not lead to code, or code review. Also, usable features do not program themselves; they require somebody who wants to code those. And unless you pay them, volunteer coders have a tendency to produce extra features, instead of making existing features better.”

Oh, howI agree with you on that! But I still think the political situation influences things. The best coders, not necessarily the people who emphathize the best with end users, probably will be the ones prevailing on most open source projects.

David

If you use Mambo/Joomla the way it was intended to be used (big news blocks in the middle, user-contributed contented, “fun” sidebars such as calendars), it is probably one of the user-friendliest things you can get.

“So often, leadership within open source efforts is based too much on programming ability and not enough on the ability to empathize with the end users.”

That is because “the ability to empathize with the end users” does not lead to code , or code review. Also, usable features do not program themselves; they require somebody who wants to code those. And unless you pay them, volunteer coders have a tendency to produce extra features, instead of making existing features better.

If you want to break that gridlock, you’ll have to think up a method to do so. The developers themselves have no need for that, because they already have the features they want.