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> we don’t have a marketing department or a management team of people who decide on a feature that is then pushed down to the users, as has been happening with
by mehdix 7y ago
> we don’t have a marketing department or a management team of people who decide on a feature that is then pushed down to the users, as has been happening with RealPlayer and BS.Player. So, when we add a feature it’s because people actually need it and actually want it.
There is a clear distinction between software written with profit in mind and free software. Behind the first one often there are people with agendas, strong opinions and marketing departments. They keep breaking things and force me to change my habits to their likings. The second group however, is user-oriented with no marketing department. I used to dislike vlc and its ui. After many years of experiencing software that breaks and pushes to change me I learned to love vlc. Even if it looks different. I don't care about this anymore. Actually I've developed a liking for it, let it break the UI conformaty. It works and is a solid piece of software and this is just brilliant.
- b3kart 7y agoI wouldn't agree that the distinction is so clear, unfortunately. There are people with agendas on both sides. For-profit software obviously needs to make money, so whatever people are more likely to pay for is prioritized, even if it's not what a typical user wants the most. Developers of free software are often people with full-time jobs and limited free time, so whatever is more fun to work on and/or matches their skillset is prioritized, which, again, might not be that annoying bug that everybody wants fixed, but which would involve re-writing half the code. I am generalizing, of course: VLC is one of the counter-examples.
- mehdix 7y agoI agree that the distinction is not so clear; contrary to my statement. However, I think the distinction gets clearer over time. Nowadays, I try to prioratize agenda-free software over agenda-driven ones as much as possible.