5 ms·

"Because non-technical/non-contributing users are nothing but a drain to FOSS projects." except that the size of the userbase drives companies to port their pr

by relate 12y ago

"Because non-technical/non-contributing users are nothing but a drain to FOSS projects." except that the size of the userbase drives companies to port their products to the platform.

freshhawk 12y ago
Sure, there are long term high level strategic interests that could be helped for sure. How convincing is this though? "I would like you to volunteer to work on this project that you don't want and wouldn't use (and therefore probably won't do a great job with). You will be inundated with support requests from unskilled users. I would like you to do this because if a lot of people do it, it might convince a unspecified number of companies to port their software to linux at some unspecified time in the future. That's only if you are completely successful building this for and marketing this to people who you don't understand or care about. You will have no help from designers or user interface people because they don't give a shit about you or this. Design and user experience will be the most important parts of this, technical quality will not influence success because the users don't care about that. You will get no social capital from this because the users don't give a shit about what you do. Do this instead of one of the huge number of really interesting projects building things you would love to have that are on your plate right now, the ones where your peers will recognize, appreciate, understand and value your hard work."
- woah 12y ago
  Big issue here is the issue that open source has with designers. It's really frustrating to try to get a clear vision executed in the "doocracy" of an OSS project, where developers will often implement features to "scratch an itch".
  - freshhawk 12y ago
    Yeah, it's hard not to see that as something it would be good to get past. Developers deal with that at the architecture level decently enough. Maybe the filling in part is just less fun than it is for software so it's harder to get volunteers? Maybe it's how credit/social capital works in a different community? It is frustrating, those skills make such a difference.

by relate 12y ago

"Because non-technical/non-contributing users are nothing but a drain to FOSS projects." except that the size of the userbase drives companies to port their products to the platform.

freshhawk 12y ago

Sure, there are long term high level strategic interests that could be helped for sure. How convincing is this though? "I would like you to volunteer to work on this project that you don't want and wouldn't use (and therefore probably won't do a great job with). You will be inundated with support requests from unskilled users. I would like you to do this because if a lot of people do it, it might convince a unspecified number of companies to port their software to linux at some unspecified time in the future. That's only if you are completely successful building this for and marketing this to people who you don't understand or care about. You will have no help from designers or user interface people because they don't give a shit about you or this. Design and user experience will be the most important parts of this, technical quality will not influence success because the users don't care about that. You will get no social capital from this because the users don't give a shit about what you do. Do this instead of one of the huge number of really interesting projects building things you would love to have that are on your plate right now, the ones where your peers will recognize, appreciate, understand and value your hard work."

woah 12y ago
Big issue here is the issue that open source has with designers. It's really frustrating to try to get a clear vision executed in the "doocracy" of an OSS project, where developers will often implement features to "scratch an itch".
- freshhawk 12y ago
  Yeah, it's hard not to see that as something it would be good to get past. Developers deal with that at the architecture level decently enough. Maybe the filling in part is just less fun than it is for software so it's harder to get volunteers? Maybe it's how credit/social capital works in a different community? It is frustrating, those skills make such a difference.