Stephan Sokolow (He/Him)

My main problem with Metro is that, in many ways, it sacrifices not just desktop usability, but principles which apply universally in the name of an art style.

For example, while the screenshot in the article doesn't look quite this bad, Windows 8's de facto official implementation of Metro look and feel doesn't clearly indicate what does and doesn't respond to clicks/touches.

Another bullet dodged in that screenshot is how the live tiles make it difficult to quickly identify a specific application so you can click/touch it.

Finally, as a matter of personal taste, I just think that flat design is a huge overreaction to excess skeuomorphism and that using it is an equally large design mistake.

As for touch-friendly UIs I use regularly, circumstances have conspired to keep me only working with them for others to use.

I use them when I'm out or need to test one of my creations and I borrow a smartphone from a friend or family member, but the only portable device I've found where the benefits outweigh the downsides enough for me to own it myself is the old 600Mhz version of the <a href="http://www.openpandora.org/">OpenPandora</a> palmtop PC which:
<ul>
<li>...uses a resistive touchscreen (stylus/fingernail without multi-touch. Doesn't respond to the fat-finger touches.)</li>
<li>...runs Ångstrom Linux with a <a href="http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/2189-what-does-your-pandoras-desktop-look-like-share-screenshots-here/">normal Xfce desktop</a> (A mouse-oriented UI with fonts and icons set bigger than the old 800x600-era defaults and single-click mode enabled)</li>
<li>...Has a hardware keyboard and D-pad mapped to arrow keys which are often used for UI navigation</li>
</ul>

I also don't own anything like a tablet PC for home use because I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive about smudgy screens and my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PRS-505_IMG_0579.jpg">Sony PRS-505</a> eBook reader is still working perfectly.

Creative Commons licenses have no concept of "source code" so they're best left for things where the forms for editing and using the thing are one and the same.

Software licenses which care about reciprocity address that distinction explicitly. (Generally, by saying that if you give someone a binary copy of the code covered by the license, you have to also give them a means to acquire the source from which it was built)

Also, I'm surprised that no mention was made of the LGPL at all, what with popular libraries like Qt, GTK+, Hibernate, the Mono runtime libraries, and ffmpeg being offered under it.