4 ms·

I think this makes some good points about how projects have trouble reaching users. The fact that people try a program 4 years ago and don't check back since,

I think this makes some good points about how projects have trouble reaching users. The fact that people try a program 4 years ago and don't check back since, is particularly true. But I'd add one other big problem for open source: "anti-marketing", in the form of aggregating trolls. I don't have to Google far to find sites that apparently just crawl SourceForge and dig up whatever crap they can automatically generate ad-ridden pages for. A lot of direct harm to projects comes from trolls: - They don't properly credit, and certainly don't link to, the page that they crawled (e.g. SourceForge). So users have no way of knowing that a more complete and authoritative source exists. - They often don't "re-crawl", so within a matter of months they're advertising something extremely old. - They usually don't have all the details quite right. So their pages seem "authentic", yet are wrong in critical places (such as, system requirements; I've seen things as stupid as non-Windows programs that "require Windows XP"). - Their robots are sloppy. For instance, I've seen them create a "what's new" page that completely misinterprets the original source release notes, resulting in a couple of nonsensical bullet points. This makes it seem like the software maintainer is retarded. - They give no direct control to project owners. Not only is there no way to update a page, but even if there were, the site has no way of knowing that the person contacting them is the true maintainer of the software. Whichever one of these trolls becomes king of Google will do the most damage.

kaitnieks 17y ago
These things can be fixed by automatic check for updates and preferably seamless automatic update, but the problem is that people who normally like open source don't like automatic updates. People don't like when they're asked too much questions ("Do you want to check for updates?" - Yes - "Do you want to download update?" - Yes - "Do you want to update now" - ffs just do it!) and they don't like if program does this kind of stuff silently in background. How to fix this problem?
- smokinn 17y ago
  people who normally like open source don't like automatic updates Really? Where does that come from? Because one of the things I love most about running Ubuntu is that everything just stays up to date on its own. I'm always very wary of installing something myself and will nearly always take the apt-get route unless I really need that very latest feature. Whenever I evangelize running linux, (which is very rarely) this is one of my big selling points. When people see the update manager pop up, update a bunch of programs while I'm doing other stuff and not even ask me to reboot they're often convinced to give it a try.
  - arohner 17y ago
    There's one other benefit of Ubuntu that is worth pointing out: there's only one source of automatic updates. The auto updates on OSX and windows drive me nuts because every app has their own updater with their own UI and their own preference for whether and when and how to update.
- derefr 17y ago
  You fix it by giving Windows and OS X package management. It's not something one app provider can do (well, maybe Apple could bundle it with iTunes...)

kaitnieks 17y ago

These things can be fixed by automatic check for updates and preferably seamless automatic update, but the problem is that people who normally like open source don't like automatic updates. People don't like when they're asked too much questions ("Do you want to check for updates?" - Yes - "Do you want to download update?" - Yes - "Do you want to update now" - ffs just do it!) and they don't like if program does this kind of stuff silently in background. How to fix this problem?

smokinn 17y ago
people who normally like open source don't like automatic updates Really? Where does that come from? Because one of the things I love most about running Ubuntu is that everything just stays up to date on its own. I'm always very wary of installing something myself and will nearly always take the apt-get route unless I really need that very latest feature. Whenever I evangelize running linux, (which is very rarely) this is one of my big selling points. When people see the update manager pop up, update a bunch of programs while I'm doing other stuff and not even ask me to reboot they're often convinced to give it a try.
- arohner 17y ago
  There's one other benefit of Ubuntu that is worth pointing out: there's only one source of automatic updates. The auto updates on OSX and windows drive me nuts because every app has their own updater with their own UI and their own preference for whether and when and how to update.
derefr 17y ago
You fix it by giving Windows and OS X package management. It's not something one app provider can do (well, maybe Apple could bundle it with iTunes...)