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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Making users count
From:       Tim Jansen <tim () tjansen ! de>(by way of Tim Jansen <ml () tjansen ! de>)
Date:       2002-07-03 21:27:12
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On Wednesday 03 July 2002 11:06, Derek Fountain wrote:
> But you didn't actually answer my question. Do you believe users opinions,
> concerns and criticisms are useful input, and something to be reacted to,
> or do you believe that users are something to get "pissed" at because,
> after all, you're just doing this for fun?

Do I write my software with users in mind? Yes. Actually everything I did for 
KDE so far is software that I will not use very often because I am not in the 
target group. I did it because I want a free DE to succeed, because I think I 
can make a large difference with a modest time investment, because I think it 
will be useful for many people and because it is fun.

Do I listen to suggestions from users? Yes, but I only implement them if I 
think that they are good ideas. I also have to prioritize, based on the 
usefulness and the cost (in time and complexity) of the feature.

Do I think that people/users have the right to DEMAND improvements for 
something that I have donated? No, unless they pay me. And I can understand 
when developers are annoyed and feel attacked when somebody starts writing 
articles and complains in public... 

What about developers who write code only for themselves? I dont care much 
about that. I dont have the right to demand from them that they write it for 
the users. And working, user-unfriendly code is MUCH better than no code at 
all. Making the user-unfriendly code user-friendly usually takes only a 
fraction of the time of writing it from the scratch.

Should developers help end-users, in other words: offer free tech support? 
This is something that you cannot demand from a developer. Most do it to a 
certain level, but if somebody is intended to answer a hundred of emails each 
day there is not much time for coding... beside that many just dont like it, 
of course. Free software just means that you get the source code and can do 
almost everything with it, it does not include support. Everybody is welcome 
to offer free tech support for KDE, and peer support can be a great concept 
to help users. But you cant demand it unless you pay for it.

Would I invest a relatively large amount of time for writing a feature or a 
fix that will be useful for only few people and that wont bring KDE forward?
Unlikely, unless it's fun or somebody pays me for this. 

IMHO KDE and free OSes in general are far from being competitive to other 
commercial offerings (like those from Cupertino and Redmond). Even if some 
people seem to be happy because they contain all features that they want (or 
at least all features that they think they need). But that wont help, because 
you need to make everybody happy in order to take over the world. Each 
missing feature will prevent a whole block of users from adapting KDE. As an 
example, AFAIK there is nothing comparable to TAPI in Windows. This in turn 
makes it hard to deploy KDE/Linux in a call center. This in turn makes it 
impossible for companies, that want to standardize on a single desktop (to 
reduce training and support costs), to use KDE/Linux.

What counts is the velocity of the project, it must offer at least as much as 
the competition to succeed while the competition is gaining features at the 
same time. I dont have any problem to find 20 major features that are just 
not available on the KDE/Linux combi, at least not in a way that regular 
users could use it. For many things, like network authentication, there are 
even great backends available (Kerberos in this case) but a) nothing in KDE 
uses it and b) there is no good UI for it. For others, of course, network 
authentication would just make KDE "bloatware", but KDE still needs it to 
succeed. You cant make everybody happy, especially many "advanced" users who 
would  wish that the development of new features stops when the project 
contains everything that they need.

bye...

 
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