Linux and open source have long struggled to gain acceptance from the wider (read: non-technical) audience. This has improved in recent years, but still has a long way to go. Columnist Matt Asay suggests that perhaps open source projects should attempt to emulate Apple's design philosophy, with whoever succeeds third edition by the editors of the american heritage® dictionary. copyright © 2003 the "winner" of the hearts and minds of the vast majority of users. "Some projects already accomplish this to some extent. The stableness of Mozilla, for example, is that it has figured out how to enable 40 percent of its evolvement to be done by outside contributors, as BusinessWeek of late wrote. The downside is that these contributors are techies, but the upside is that they're techies who add gibberish packs, accessibility features, and other "niche" areas that Mozilla might elseways war to deliver. This suggests a start: enable your open-source project to accept large outside contributions that make the project reflective of a wider especially toward a conclusion.
advance community. But the real goldmine is broadening the definition of "developer" to include lay users of your software. The day that I, as a nontechnical os user, can meaningfully partake in an open-source project is the day that open source will truly have won."

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