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Counterpoint: you have a successful open source project and you even “branded and marketed” it (like Grafana). You obviously want it to be successful? Then list

by davedx 4y ago

Counterpoint: you have a successful open source project and you even “branded and marketed” it (like Grafana). You obviously want it to be successful? Then listen to your users and respond to their questions. Entitlement is a two way street.

jeroenhd 4y ago
The company Grafana and the open source project Grafana have different customers with different requirements and requests. If BigCorp wants purple widgets for their next massive migration towards Grafana and a bunch of free users are asking for the Foobars to be yellow then I don't see why it would make any sense for Grafana to take widget purplelization manpower away from their paying customer to yellowify foobars. You've placed your upvote, your request has been noted and noticed. Next time there's dev capacity free there will be an evaluation of the most pressing open source issues and your concerns will probably be taken into account. If you really need or want a feature, either build it yourself and send a PR or pay someone (probably the Grafana devs) to build it for you. Don't expect Grafana to solve your problems for you if you're not an important, paying customer, because they're a business; the focus should be on what keeps the lights on, not on which issue attracts the most vocal crowd on Github. Maybe Grafana doesn't want what you want. Some features should not be in some products or implemented in some ways. Maybe something is of such little influence that you can be reasonably sure that only the free users will ever use a feature (i.e. features that compete with your paid offering). I agree that entitlement is a two way street, but not in the way you probably think about it. If your users act entitled to support and attention, you're entitled to some kind of compensation.
- nijave 4y ago
  Not sure if Grafana operates this way but some companies make it doubly confusing by running all their feature requests through public issue trackers. It's unclear if there are users replying to issues that already pay but don't pay enough to get exclusive dev team access (which can still be a pretty hefty fee--you could pay $10k/mon but still pale in comparison to the customer with a $1m/year contract) Azure, AWS, GCP, and Okta all have products I've used with shared issue trackers (for at least some of their software)
Barrin92 4y ago
that's not necessarily a recipe for success. As the (admittedly over-quoted) Ford quip goes."if I had asked them what they wanted, they'd have said faster horses". Software development requires a solid amount of confidence to ,at times, be willing to disappoint users to keep a project on track. If you listen to what is likely an incredibly scattered and unfocused sea of requests you're going to lose control quickly. Torvalds and Linux are one positive example of someone who has maintained control often against demands.
projektfu 4y ago
This jumped out at me. Software has always had grandiose marketing and I figure that a successful large-business image usually works better than mom & pop imagery. But it probably encourages people to see the person or team behind an OSS product as at least a cog in a big machine, if not a successful entrepreneur. I'm reminded of the scene in Cinderella Man where Jim's wife Mae goes to tell off Joe Gould calling him rich and entitled, basically, and they invite her into the big apartment and they've sold all the furniture except a table and two chairs.
throwaway0129u 4y ago
True. If someone clearly describes their project as an experiment or a hobby project then no responsibility should be attached to it. But if they advertise it as something production-ready or secure they are capturing user's trust, attention and time. Some company-driven projects even use open source as a foot in the door to get user's data or corner a market and charge money later on. As a developer your time is valuable and users should not be demand it. As a user your trust, attention and time are valuable and not every random project on github should get it.

by davedx 4y ago

jeroenhd 4y ago

The company Grafana and the open source project Grafana have different customers with different requirements and requests. If BigCorp wants purple widgets for their next massive migration towards Grafana and a bunch of free users are asking for the Foobars to be yellow then I don't see why it would make any sense for Grafana to take widget purplelization manpower away from their paying customer to yellowify foobars. You've placed your upvote, your request has been noted and noticed. Next time there's dev capacity free there will be an evaluation of the most pressing open source issues and your concerns will probably be taken into account. If you really need or want a feature, either build it yourself and send a PR or pay someone (probably the Grafana devs) to build it for you. Don't expect Grafana to solve your problems for you if you're not an important, paying customer, because they're a business; the focus should be on what keeps the lights on, not on which issue attracts the most vocal crowd on Github. Maybe Grafana doesn't want what you want. Some features should not be in some products or implemented in some ways. Maybe something is of such little influence that you can be reasonably sure that only the free users will ever use a feature (i.e. features that compete with your paid offering). I agree that entitlement is a two way street, but not in the way you probably think about it. If your users act entitled to support and attention, you're entitled to some kind of compensation.

nijave 4y ago
Not sure if Grafana operates this way but some companies make it doubly confusing by running all their feature requests through public issue trackers. It's unclear if there are users replying to issues that already pay but don't pay enough to get exclusive dev team access (which can still be a pretty hefty fee--you could pay $10k/mon but still pale in comparison to the customer with a $1m/year contract) Azure, AWS, GCP, and Okta all have products I've used with shared issue trackers (for at least some of their software)

Barrin92 4y ago

that's not necessarily a recipe for success. As the (admittedly over-quoted) Ford quip goes."if I had asked them what they wanted, they'd have said faster horses". Software development requires a solid amount of confidence to ,at times, be willing to disappoint users to keep a project on track. If you listen to what is likely an incredibly scattered and unfocused sea of requests you're going to lose control quickly. Torvalds and Linux are one positive example of someone who has maintained control often against demands.

projektfu 4y ago

This jumped out at me. Software has always had grandiose marketing and I figure that a successful large-business image usually works better than mom & pop imagery. But it probably encourages people to see the person or team behind an OSS product as at least a cog in a big machine, if not a successful entrepreneur. I'm reminded of the scene in Cinderella Man where Jim's wife Mae goes to tell off Joe Gould calling him rich and entitled, basically, and they invite her into the big apartment and they've sold all the furniture except a table and two chairs.

throwaway0129u 4y ago

True. If someone clearly describes their project as an experiment or a hobby project then no responsibility should be attached to it. But if they advertise it as something production-ready or secure they are capturing user's trust, attention and time. Some company-driven projects even use open source as a foot in the door to get user's data or corner a market and charge money later on. As a developer your time is valuable and users should not be demand it. As a user your trust, attention and time are valuable and not every random project on github should get it.