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Please spare us of this tired trope. People who don't contribute to FOSS, are also allowed to have an opinion on FOSS if they're users of it. Otherwise how woul
by FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Please spare us of this tired trope. People who don't contribute to FOSS, are also allowed to have an opinion on FOSS if they're users of it. Otherwise how would they know what to improve if you don't allow feedback from users? What you're saying is like car companies thinking their customers' opinions are irelevant because their customers never contributed to designing parts of a car.
If you're designing a mainstream product that's not just targeting professional SW developers who can contribute back with code, but also average users who will only use it but never contribute, then you will need to be open to mainstream levels of feedback that represent the average user and not just programmers.
Otherwise let's keep complaining Linux and FOSS alternatives have only ~2% market share that it's somehow the users' fault for only buying Microsoft/Apple and not the projects' for being stubborn to feedback and out of touch with their mainstream users.
- EasyMark 3y agoI have contributed and improved more than a few FOSS pieces of software that I used when I thought it could use improvement or a bug fix, or even just documentation of the bug. FOSS isn't a company, and a huge portion of contributors aren't paid a dime. It bothers me when people criticize with vehemence against the developers, where I express my opinion is on the nature of belligerent complaints vs helpful ones. Have a nice day.
- Klonoar 3y agoNo, they're right. It's not a requirement to sling code to put your opinions out there about open source.
- bee_rider 3y agoEveryone has their opinions. There are so many opinions out there, it isn’t really clear what to do with them. Put them out there, fine, now everybody else just has to decide if they care. One way to tell if you should care about an opinion is to check and see if the person professing it has taken any concrete actions toward getting the world to align with it.
- Klonoar 3y ago> There are so many opinions out there, it isn’t really clear what to do with them. Thankfully large projects generally have feedback loop systems to figure out how to parse that feedback. The rest of your comment isn't particularly contributing to the discussion here, short of trying to re-cement a broken take.
- t43562 3y agoI remember my cousin telling me how horrible it was to work at a hotel - you really found out how horrible people could be when they thought they were owed something. Staff there obviously had to put up with it because that was their job. Regarding FOSS, I think some users forget that they're at a free lunch and are unpleasant and insistent about their complaints as if they were paying. They're not entitled to service and don't seem to realise it. As to whether everyone else should listen - sure - but nobody is forced to work overtime just to right some wrong in OSS software because person A was very upset about it.