3 ms·

Sounds like you want a product owner, or maybe a BA? Is the "problem" with open source that it is mostly, only developers working on software?

• 6510 5y ago
  It seems by definition only developers should be working on the software? Financially motivated efforts have many useful occupations that don't work on the software but bring competitive advantage. Imagine someone who designs cars. He could answer questions from those learning how to drive but it would be pretty uninteresting. He would have to do a lot of it until something related to design would come along. Users driving the application can learn interesting things from the discussion about it and may enjoy selfless acts of helping others. We know how to do forums, wiki and IRC if the community is willing and big enough. Smaller projects sometimes have barely populated mostly silent IRC channels. It should, at least in theory, be possible to combine those categorically. Developers can already set all of these up but doing the whole list and maintaining it takes a lot of effort and it is a waste of time if there are 3 and a half users. There is plenty of low hanging fruit. If there are enough low effort participants someone will properly fill the bug if the issue is worthy. It is also motivating to be able to see users when a developer doubts the value of his effort. Who knows, perhaps there are big ideas to be had?