Following the recent complaints regarding the lack of proper market research in the F/OSS world, KDE users suggested paying money through Bugzilla to see their features/bugfixes done, a proposal that was denied by the core KDE developers. The lengthy discussion comes down to SuSE’s Waldo Bastian reply which illustrates once more the developer-centric nature of F/OSS (in contrast to the more user-centric nature of commercial products): “KDE will be able to sustain itself just fine without users, while it will not last a single day without developers. So when it comes to choosing between scaring away developers and scaring away users, the choice is rather easy actually.” (2nd reply)
Special Note: My article the other day that seemed to have created a huge controversy, was not about implementing every damn thing people wanted, but only implement things that are really needed by the majority and only when these things are not coming in contrast with the general direction of the project. For example, if someone was asking Gnome to implement a “KDE-alike control panel”, that should be rejected because that design is not Gnome’s way. But when someone says “make Shift+Delete to delete a file on Nautilus automatically”, that’s a legitimate feature request to be taken under consideration, and many users would expect it to be there already (that’s not my feature request btw).
It’s about market research, it’s about putting together things that really need to get done (that’s feedback filtered by a special team, not by the developers who are already under a lot of pressure). That’s what market research is about. It’s not about listen to every single idiot out there and his little or big feature request. So, don’t take my article out of context and don’t make it about myself or specific feature requests, because it is not so. It is about evolving a project to become better by taking in some well-structured user feedback in it. That’s all.
Yes, we have discussed this issue at Gnome thread! We know both opionion: users and developers.
OK, whatever. I’m ready for another thread with +200 posts.
haha, a I like his sense of humor
KDE will be able to sustain itself just fine without users, while it will not last a single day without developers. So when it comes to choosing between scaring away developers and scaring away users, the choice is rather easy actually.”
If there is any situation where a WTF is warrented, this is definately it. Without users and considering something like KDE, a user centric interface, there is little reason to develop.
Also there is kde-look.org, which provides a method to rank developer contributions in order of percieved importance and allows developer/user interaction.
As to why the KDE developers would not like to earn a quick buck, is lost to me?
Before the flames start, here are some miconceptions to avoid: This is a request to give users of free software an additional freedom:
The freedom to join other people and, together,
sponsor the developement of the feature we need.
Currently we don’t have such a freedom, for many reasons:
If it can happen that I donate money and this money is not used to develop the feature I need, I don’t have such a freedom. Until I don’t have a guarantee that my money will be used for that feature, I don’t have such a freedom.
My belief is that giving this freedom would not hurt anyone else’s freedom. It would only increase the number of developers, it would improve our advocacy potential, and many other things.
*think* Your father must have mistaken the whore that calls herself your
mother for a goat. In that regard it’s positive that you were named after
your mother, and not Goatmann after your father 😉
I can only hope that Bastian and Homann know each other well enough to make that comment a joke rather than a personal insult. Even if they do it doesn’t make for a good impression about the level of discussion on what is a public accessible mailing list.
The purpose of software, the reason it exists, the reason developers have jobs, is to meet the needs of users.
When developers use software, they do so as a tiny subset of all users. They need specialized tools to meet specialized needs, but the insights they draw from their experiences using those tools are not necessarily applicable to mainstream software users.
Mainstream users are not enamored of software and will not use new software simply for the novelty effect, or because one piece of code is technically superior to another. They consider software as a means to an end. The only way for developers to deliver software that meets the needs of users is to ask questions and observe what users do.
It is the epitome of short-sighted arrogance to claim that software can survive without users.
I find it odd how people can complain about a FREE product. If KDE is so bad/unusable to a user then simply do not use it. Personally, I find KDE more than adequate for my day to day work.
Whilst it is easy to complain, it is more difficult to dive in and actually make a difference, contribute code, patches even money.
If this makes you angry or upset then too bad.
I am a user that cannot contributer anything, in this case I side with the developers.
Eugenia, I am quite sure that you do know that most developers work on KDE in their spare time and that they don’t earn any money for their work.
How would it strike you if users constantly demand from you that you write articles about subjects you are not interested in at all? Would you spend your spare time with things you are not interested in, just because other people want you to do so?
If your answer to this is no, then please stop complaining about KDE developers and other F/OSS developers not spending their time on things they are not interested in, just because you are someone else misses a certain feature. What about implementing the features you miss on your own instead of spending your time with complaining about other people not implementing the features you want?
i very much liked the last quote..and it’s kinda true.. i’m also against the throw-money-at-problems solution.. you can support the whole thing and hope your bug gets fixed (which it will if the devs are seeking the perfect product (which will never happen but is a good goal
))
if you want something fixed at all costs then 1. do it yourself or 2. look for someone willing to do it (which can be using money, but i’m against doing it in a centralistic way – i.e. through bugzilla) – just keep in mind that it takes quit a lot of money to get something fixed if you want to pay per hours.. 1000$/bug is reasonable! (and not the $10 curtesy donation)
but anyway, at least as long as there are devs, there will be users (even if these are the devs
)
Other than core developers that already know the system inside and out, there’s no such thing as a “quick buck” for adding meaningful features that modifies the core system itself in any meaningful way. A lot of the features that seem like “minor things” are likely to require a lot more than small changes to the system. While I’ve not built it myself, chances are Gnome and KDE take quite a lot of time to build, even on the fastest systems: thus, there’s no such thing as “a quick buck” at least not with what people are willing to contribute, unless there are enough people to contribute money to make it a worthwhile hourly wage equivalent.
A lot of people simply don’t seem to understand just how involved it can be to add something to a large system: what the learning curve is to know what you’re adding to, the build time, the test time, etc. and thus make the “that’s easy for you to say, harder for anyone to do” mistake.
So, if they normally aren’t getting paid to develop something, I don’t see why others should get upset if they develop the features they feel like to scratch an itch, instead of choosing to develop features that stop a bitch, which are at least as likely to not go off without a hitch, as others will complain about those new features and how they make them twitch. Might as well add the features you want, if you’re going to get complaints
Maybe it’s time for a comercial desktop environment for linux. It seems that this is the only way to linux suceed on desktop. If F/OSS developers wants to build software just for their own use, good. But don’t try to convence anyone else to use it. Microsoft can kill linux/F/OSS desktop OS just cuting their prices. KDE and Gnome must learn a lot from the mozilla folks. Mozilla has done it the right way. The ironic part of this is that some of the most sucessfull F/OSS softwares outthere (mozilla and OpenOffice.org) born from comercial ones.
Again, using the opinion of a few peple to generalize the whole!
Come on, we can do better than that!
*Klon Kills himself with laughter as per the goat comment.
What??? Do they want money for adding extra features requested by users or fixing the bugs??? Ha, ha, ha… Ho, ho, ho…
If you want money you better work for M$, Novel, RedHat, etc, the entities which make money selling distributions, services or whatever else on programs you DID write for “FREE”.
If you don’t have the TEETH to bite them, then don’t try to bite users!!!
Users just make use of your programs for fun and work for you as bug testers!
If you have the guts modify the license telling that no company has any right to make money using my code I write for “free as freedom”.
You want to correct the bug and add additional features; we thank you! You don’t want; no problema!
Popeye the Sailor Man
How did the people complaining about whining come to that conclusion or is osnews no longer a news website and therefore should only post none controversial news topics.
The closest she comes to “whining” is to say that FOSS is developercentric and all of a suden this is bad.
Even though I’m primary a Mac user, I agree with the developers.
I can imagine that for most of the developers, that (apart from being a part time job), developing KDE is also their hobby.
When you’ve got to do something for money, a certain pressure is put upon you (you must be responsible for your actions, even explain if you can’t complete a feature). Personally I wouldn’t like that kind of pressure on any hobby of mine…
Selecting one post out of a heated flamewar and presenting the contents as some kind of representative/official position is ludicrous.
Before people begin moaning they should _whole_ discussion on kde-devel and where discussion begun.
Initial proposition was completely rejected (and rightly so). But there was mentioned another ways to support developers – also financially.
Maintainers have control over their little piece of the pie that is KDE (say Kmail). So they dont want to give up their control that just because something is popular that it will get in.
I see a compromise. Maintainers could ultimately decide what is a worthy feature/bug fix based on the list that is given by users.
Of course you have the money issue too. Some people think that money “taints” KDE somehow. Of course that’s a ridiculous notion. You already have people getting paid by Mandrake or Suse to work on this stuff. So you have people with a political motivation not wanting money involved, and then you have people who are already getting paid that don’t want other people getting paid, and then you also have maintainers that don’t get paid that don’t want others getting paid.
Since my money is not sufficient to allow me to finance, alone, the feature I need, I am asking for the freedom to join other people and, together, sponsor the developement of a specific feature that we all need.
Currently I don’t have this freedom, until KDE/GNOME (or someone else) gives me a structure, a system, that:
1. gives me the certainty that my money will be used to develop that feature (if the overall donation reaches a minimum threshold) .
2. allows me to donate to a specific feature.
3. lets me see the overall donation reached so far, manages the threshold;
4. managing credit cards and secure transactions.
Until all that is available, I don’t have that freedom.
No, i am not personally acquianted to mr bastian.
and as you can guess, i am not amused about hos opinions of my parents sexual preferences and/or orientation.
Right now, I am seriously considering to take this issue one or two steps further.
if your willing to pay.. why not just hit up http://rentacoder.com and post a job. have them submit the patch. your money goes to the feature/bug you need fixed and you’ve helped us all by providing your feature/bug.
if you want a bug fixed AND want to support the kde project.. you can donate money and time(or a coder’s time)
So let me get this straight, users are second rate to developers for KDE. This is exactly the kind of attitude that will keep OSS from really becoming mainstream. Input from users means better features and more users. More users mean more exposure. More exposure means more developers. That’s the way I see it.
I use Linux and I hate it, but I hate Microsoft even more. What’s a user to do.
I somehow do not like this recent “users vs devs” fore bulding. It’s so much unlike what (F)OSS should be about and it’s so much unlikely to get to a good end.
You have to wonder, whether all those daily “linux desktop”/”corporate linux”/”linux market share” ranting has any value, if the only users most of the actual devs of such desktop share critical applications seem to care about, are themselves.
Which on the other hand doesn’t mean, that I don’t understand the devs standpoint – it’s the bilateral lack of give-and-take which makes me sad.
The difference with the current donation system is that the new system would exploit the selfish interests of users, and turn it into advantage for the free software movement.
The assumption is that much more users will be willing to donate if you give them some kind of guarantee that their money will be used to develop the feature they want, and not something else.
OK, whatever. I’m ready for another thread with +200 posts
Yeah, bring ’em on!
There is nothing remotely as entertaining as base less trolling while you are waiting for gigabytes of data to transfer over a slow connection
Guys, it wasnt Eugenia that submitted this, it was Mathias.
So quit raining on Eugenia.
Get a mac 🙂
What??? Do they want money for adding extra features requested by users or fixing the bugs??? Ha, ha, ha… Ho, ho, ho…
Actually, RTFA, it’s the other way around. The users want to pay for certain features, but the developers don’t want that model.
well, i didnt really submit it, i just send her a link to that reply i got from waldo bastian as a followup to her rant about the uppity gnome devs…
sort of a “look here, some of the kde folks arent much better”…
I don’t think Bastian was trying to personally offend you. Looks more like a try at sarcasm. Something like “You think that was personally insulting? Think again: here you have real insults”.
And if you’re thinking about legal measures… well, what can I say. I wouldn’t think too highly of you if you sued a visible head of KDE development because you feel his sense of humour was a real personal insult.
Oh, and it would be nice if Eugenia posted real news. Instead of trying to force OSS developers to do things her way by stirring public opinion against them. It’s just low.
My impression was that developers don’t like the idea of people financing specific feature, because they fear to loose decisional power; they fear the user would begin dictating how they should do things. they fear democracy.
But this is not true. No developer would be forced to do what users want. Developers would be free to accept a bounty, and be paid, or keep working like they are doing now. Nobody is willing to force anyone.
The proposal was:
>The idea is that
>1. everyone can donate freely for any feature separately (or not donate at all).
>2. when, and if, the *overall* donation for a given feature reaches a certain threshold,
>that feature is *guaranteed* to be implemented.
This would make the paying users the actual rulers of the project. I can easily see why the developers are not accepting it.
A much smarter proposal would have been for the users to get together to offer bounties in order to see their favourite features implemented. The obvious and substantial difference is that bounties aren’t forcing developers to do anything – they’re just what they ought to be: an incentive.
that’s picked up by every MAJOR company / project that has supported linux.
Lets see,
VMWare, NVidia, Nero, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Novell, RedHat just to name a few.
What does KDE have? TheKompany?
If that’s going to be their attitude then screw them. They would be no where without users because if they didn’t have users there wouldn’t be any point to putting in all the effort to create KDE. Oh well – I guess thats why I use a Mac now.
I’m against the idea of users paying to have certain features implemented (simply put). Money does weird things with good people, so it’s a bad idea, in my humble opinion.
However, the above statement that, just like the Gnome devs reply, states “we won’t listen to user feedback, we only do what we deem nescesary”, is utterly ignorant and out of this world. Well, read my ( http://www.expert-zone.com/index.php?module=announce&ANN_user_op=vi… ) editorial. I guess it can be applied to the KDE team as well.
Sad, really.
Jonathan, please email me. I have already posted a reply for you in the moderated area.
“Actually, RTFA, it’s the other way around. The users want to pay for certain features, but the developers don’t want that model.”
Actually, STBL (see the bloody life), many “free software” developers, through their web pages, asks for donations. “Donations” and “Non-profit organisations” are the easiest and “smartest” ways to ask for MONEY nowadays!!!
Popeye the Sailor Man
And I thought these developer-centered behaviours were only found in small OSs like Amiga/MorphOS…
Leo.
If you read better, the original poster also said that the guarantee that the feature will be implemented can be relaxed to the guarantee that the feature will be worked on.
The only important point is that people should have the freedom to join other people and, together, donate for developing a specific feature. If you don’t have a guarantee that your money is used for <em>that</em> feature, you don’t have that freedom. And you loose the big incentive to donation. (well, any incentive that is not pure generosity.)
This is getting really old. FOSS is not about users, period. If that is an affront to your sensibilities, it is your problem and your problem alone.
If you want a feature write a patch or fork a project. Repeat after me, “Developers are not subserviant to me.”
These people contribute to a project because they like the project’s goals, want to be a part of a group effort and make a contribution, or because they have a concept they want to make real. With the exception of the devs who get paid by corporations these folks do not sit in cubicles waiting for work orders.
You have every right to use or not use their software as you see fit. You have the right to request or suggest features. You have no right whatsoever to demand a single thing.
If users are really serious about paying for a bugzilla style incentivee, and Gnome and KDE don’t want to implement it, then there should be a fork. Supply and Demand as its said. I would pay for some features and I’m sure others would pay for the same features.
I think the fork would have to be in the style of Ubuntu and Debian. Maintain compatibility with KDE, or Gnome depending. While providing the features that are needed, and then to include these features, after tested back into the main Gnome or KDE cvs tree.
–Ashley
“The purpose of software, the reason it exists…is to meet the needs of users.”
This isn’t so. A hacker codes because he likes to hack. Userbase, marketshare and financial prospects are secondary, if not irrelevant This is the same reason a musician plays, an artist sketches, and a writer scribbles. Commercial software simply takes a medium (programming) and uses it to create a product. It is not the reason programming exists.
—
Making demands and preaching about desktop viability are pointless endeavors when the program itself is a project, not a product. If people widely adopt a *project*, well and good, but it doesn’t matter. Concerns with *product* viability are the domain of beancounters and salespeople, not developers.
There seems to be an increasingly anti-hobbyist attitude toward software (read the comments in every FreeDOS article; read the comments here) running around. Those with this attitude have completely missed the point of why these projects exist, why Linus wrote a kernel, and why Linux and the like inspire such an overflowing enthusiasm in many of its proponents: *It’s Fun.*
That’s not forking, more customisation.
Lots of distributors patch the free software they get from the projects CVS trees to add features their respective users want or might need.
User usually don’t care which parts of their software have their origins at the project and which at the distributor, they install distributor packages.
I repeat, this page does not exist
http://www.kontact.org/shopping/
neither do all the similar improvements/bug fixing voting pages anybody can find when one actually LOOK for them.
But just forget about it, some news site run by an amateur journalist actually claims they never existed, don’t exist and never will. So it must be true?
That’s probably why people should stick to the more reliable commercial news sites like MSN or Yahoo!
All of these problems can be solved if OSS developers would just use the proper paradigm for software development:
http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/xxp.html
Is it the first time ‘Special Note’ appears on osnews?
This idea has struk me before. With one important difference though. There is no reason why such an infrastructure should be tied to and administred by a particular project.
Just as google and some other sites has a bounty system for expert replys. A company could be formed to just function as a hub distributing bounties to requested fixes in OSS software.
In essece users vote with money, but the money goes directly to the implementing developer.
> in fact many users would expect it to be there already.
“many users want” != “I want”
> It’s not about listen to every single idiot out there
> and his little or big feature request.
Exactly. So you know why this feature request was rejected. Why childishly whining, then ?
Dk, that was NOT my feature request (Havoc from Red Hat can re-affirm that for you). So, STOP making it about me, IT IS NOT about me. GET OUT of your little world and read my articles in a more generalized way.
BTW, what is the hourly salary of a good programmer in Germany? Mutiply it on an estimate of how long it will take to implement the feature you want, and I guess… Nobody would want any feature added (of for that matter, any bug fixed) THAT much 😉
BTW, Patrick, you are dead on regarding product vs. project. In fact, I was saying the same in one of the recent threads. FLOSS won’t go mainstream the way, say, Microsoft is, because FLOSS developers don’t put such a goal before themselves (and rightly so). Therefore, no revolution and world domination is pending 🙂
I’ve been a subscriber of some KDE mailling lists for quite some time now, and recenlty unsubscribed to all of them. The reason was substantially the overall confusion I found in almost every list, the lack of direction and an overwhelming, but democratic, quantity of 3ds regarding both the most insignificant detail to the very important issues. Mostly I found the overall discussion to be somewhat pointless, not driven to say the least. I remember I asked for some guidelines when I first entered the boards, and my astonishment to find out that there were none. Today I understand. And the statement “KDE will be able to
sustain itself just fine without users, while it will not last a single day without developers” really speaks for itself. KDE is not an effort to create an interface designed to meet certain goals, but is a project that basicly stands for itself. It’s not the result, but the process (developement) which seems to have the center of the scene. Which is, someway, understandable. But it’s definitely not viable, at least from a user point of view. This bis definitely not the way Linux is gonna go mainstream.
I agree with Eugenia’s position about many open source projects.
Who cares about gnome or kde? There are many others projects asking for users.
I’m using XFCE for a long time and will continues to use it.
The recent discussion over gnome developers position, and now, about kde developers position, only reforces my previous perception about their way to show the consideration about users of their projects. Maybe , this kind of debate is a good opportunity to see what these guys really think about the future of their projects. And, the demonstration of their “point of view” take me to a very bade conclusion about their egocentrics projects, perhaps even worse.
If developers are the starting point of projects as gnome and kde, so I think those projects don’t need users, and users don’t need them too.
with all the sparring going on, it seems quite obvious:
You’re either:
Both wrong
or
Both right
Either way, F/OSS is going to have to design a new development process which matches the goals of both groups.
I think this system would cause lots of people to write crap hacks to ‘implement’ a wish. These would be rejected by the maintainers as unmaintainable. Then there’ll be a big argument.
Users often have no idea about the implications of what they ask for. They often don’t think things through. If people think we don’t listen then they’re wrong, BUT we won’t do a hack job to solve a problem. We’ll try to produce a coherent, maintainable system that will keep most people happy.
If the people who wrote KDE wanted money, free software is not the way to get it.
Sadly, Microsoft doesn’t need any FUD when they have such “facts” as this little email from Waldo…
Yes, why not
No need to have users 
And these developpers think they are intelligent and they are the one who treat regular people as newbies/idiots.
You can stay with your software, there a good companies out there that take care of their customers who pay and are happy with what they use, thank you.
or perhaps I am just naive ..
I thought that the whole point of the open source movement is to give something back to world. The ethos – so aptly translated from the word “Ubuntu”.
That is what I thought FOSS was about – to give of oneself to make others experience in computing better, more enjoyable.
But no, there seems to be a lot of – “oh i want to do this because I hate that ok? So shut up cos its free, be grateful, and piss off!”
If only I could program better, I am still struggling with python!
I’ve wasted years with Microsoft crap and I thoroughly regret it.
But heck, if there is a demand for something even if hideously boring I would take that from time to time. I would expect others to do the same.
Are we are just going to think about ourselves and not those who (I thought) we were meant to help? … Those being the average user frustrated with Windows, the average Joe and Nancies exploited, bullied, threatened by all the DRM’s and EULA’s of the world.
If FOSS is quickly losing the focus, cause and purpose, it’s ethos:
It will be squashed easily by the Unscrupulous.
It was all but a very nice dream – welcome back to Tyranny.
We can’t even stick together. Every single troll, every single childish argument is being watched. And their tactics is working: divide and conquer.
Just ask yourself, who you want to dedicate your time to – who do you really want to help? Yourself or others?
If it’s just yourself … I heard Redmond and Apple.com are hiring.
(Why not also get paid for your hobby!)
RIchard, users would limit themselves to requesting features. How to implement them would be up to the developer. If a crazy developer writes bad code, just to get the money, no problem at all:
1. the code will not be accepted, so code quality is not hurt;
2. the developers will loose reputation points and nobody will donate to him anymore;
3. the people who lost the money will have lost little (because you don’t donate much to someone with low reputation points).
So, basically you want to turn kde.org into ebay.com?
It is about you because it is your intrusive “special note”. I don’t disagree on some things you say about feature requests, but you have had answers the first time. Now more and more whining without anything new will not help. I mean, having the *right* feature requests considered would be nice, but here your behaviour would certainly convince any Gnome developer to immediately reject your ideas. Get someone write articles about your ideas without agressivity, then maybe they will be considered. Usually people do accept *constructive* criticisms.
Commercial vs. Open-Source
You have what you pay for, and you have to bear the developpers state of mind / whims, etc… And say thank you.
I’d rather pay a hundred bucks a year and have a professional user-oriented desktop environment designed by a serious company.
It’s about time commercial desktop environments arise. This will perhaps give KDE and Gnome a pause. I hope they wake up and don’t treat their user base this way. Arrogance is no proof of intelligence, sorry.
I think you have luck that there is no major commercial environment, otherwise you would behave differently. If you code for yourself only, then you don’t need to share it, just keep it for you and close your web site.
>It is about you because it is your intrusive “special note”.
I felt that it was needed because people really did not get what I was trying to say. They completely misundestood my point and overblowned it. Judging on how the angry comments winded down after I posted the special note, it was a GOOD idea to having done so, so the whining is on your part now.
1. the code will not be accepted, so code quality is not hurt;
Yeah, but I doubt the guy who’s code got rejected will be too happy about it.
2. the developers will loose reputation points and nobody will donate to him anymore.
I’m not sure how this would be tracked without a lot of work on the part of the app maintainers.
3. the people who lost the money will have lost little (because you don’t donate much to someone with low reputation points).
That is true assuming the donations are made to an individual rather than to ‘whoever does X’.
Richard, I think you just proved my point.
So which is it?
(1) You are a KDE developer that is already employed by Mandrake or Suse or whoever?
(2) You are a developer who isn’t getting paid and doesn’t like the idea of others getting paid?
Because the whole “it’ll cause hacks” is just a red herring when you should know that crap hacks wouldn’t get accepted anyway.
What’s even more amusing are the unpaid developers that don’t like this, while Suse and Mandrake collect all the money.
If KDE were to have money for each bug, their focus would be on fixing the bugs with the largest pool of $$$ not the ones that are most critical to fix. This means that a company like IBM can dictate KDE’s direction by using vast $$$ supplies.
KDE refused this because of its user centric nature. Allowing cash for specific bugs or wish lists would make the opinion of those with $$$ count more than everyone else’s.
Using the voting system KDE has, everyone’s opinion is equal and this is the way it should be.
Such a move would also limit innovation. Users rarely innovate, tehy will tell you to make this work like x or fix this, but they will hardly come up with original ideas. This would only encourage developers to focus on existing things instead of taking a bird’s eye view.
Trust me, KDE cares about its users and is very committed, but such a move would have been disastrous for both developers and users.
I’ve always liked KDE, yet i’ve never been able to use it as a normal desktop. Technically it is sound: it has a start button and a task manager somewhere in there. However there are alot of little things that pop up and look bad and make me fustrated because they should not have been programmed that way in the first way.
Maybe what is required are compitent developers who know more than the innings and workings of comments and objects and instead replace them with developers with some experience on how to program applications and/or desktops.
Take KMail for example: looks nice yet how do you get 10000+ emails to sort properly in date order? Or the super-sized tray icons on the task manager that dont do much anyways? Those are examples of the things that developers should spend their time fixing, not implementing a new form of style sheet rendering inside the web browser or some other project that is a duplicate of another 50 projects where 1 is the industry standard or of commercial grade F/OSS.
I think what i’m trying to say is, with the current KDE people in charge, the things that should be fixed wont and I’ll have to be forced to use Windows because they (both m$ and the KDE guys) really dont care about me.
First of all, Eugenia, please stop posting this inflammatory stuff. You are hurting the perception of opensource by posting biased summaries of discussions.
Second of all, did anyone read the original post? The guy said he wanted a donation system, which is fine, but he also wanted a way to force developers to code features after the donations had reached a threshold.
Do you people not realize how completely ridiculous that concept is?? It’s so opposite to the motivation of OSS developers, it’s not even worth considering!
Think about it, you donate your time to an open source project because you enjoy it. Then some users want a certain feature, they donate to it, and suddenly you are forced to drop your work and code this feature in a certain amount of time!
If you don’t realize how absolutely braindead this is, then it’s fairly obvious that you’ve never volunteered for anything in your life.
The concept of donations is great, but forcing developers to code things they don’t want to is retarded beyond belief.
I agree with the bounty system. People vote for a feature, and donate towards it. In most cases, this will provide an incentive for people to implement this feature. BUT. And this is important, even if there are a million people donating for a feature, NO ONE is forced to code it.
“KDE will be able to sustain itself just fine without users, while it will not last a single day without developers. So when it comes to choosing between scaring away developers and scaring away users, the choice is rather easy actually.”
KDE with users but no developers = a KDE where no progress happens.
KDE with developers but no users = a KDE where progress happens.
Therefore, he would choose a KDE that will continue to evolve even withou many users over one with many users, but no progress.
Just ask yourself, who you want to dedicate your time to – who do you really want to help? Yourself or others?
The key here is that it’s still working that way. No matter how angry Eugenia got when the gnome developers didn’t want to start a gigantic study based solely on web polls, or how a single sarcastic message by Waldo Bastian is being used as FUD against the KDE project, you can forget that and talk to the developers. And you’ll discover many of them are as altruistic as you imagined from the beginning.
But this campaign of “You didn’t listen to Eugenia, so Eugenia goes on a quest for (her) truth” is getting ridiculous.
Oh, and the “special note” there is incredibly failed. So if the poll shows 96% of the users want a kde-like control panel in Gnome, that can be merrily dismissed as not going with the project’s goals.
Hello? What would be the polls for, them? Eugenia was saying “OSS software developers are deaf, they don’t listen to users”. How are non-vinculating polls a solution to the “problem”? Psychological pressure based on numbers? I’m sure that’s what developers working for free need.
As Federico Mena already told her in the mail she disregarded in the previous article (as many other nice answers lost in a stupid generalisation), real usability tests on 10 casual users will be much better than web polls taken by 1.000 linux geeks.
Cause, you know, market research in the first place studies what is the public you want for your “product”. And guess what, your average, non computer-savvy secretary doesn’t use her workstation to browse the gnome project’s webpage.
I don’t know, I feel stupid having to tell something so basic to someone who talks about usability and market with years of real work experience.
> > the code will not be accepted, so code quality is not
> > hurt;
> Yeah, but I doubt the guy who’s code got rejected will be
> too happy about it.
Well… his bad. He should have spoken about his intentions with the KDE developers before accepting the bounty.
>> the developers will loose reputation points and nobody
>>will donate to him anymore.
> I’m not sure how this would be tracked without a lot of
> work on the part of the app maintainers.
Simply, allow donators to vote for developers they funded, after he delivers.
>> the people who lost the money will have lost little
>> (because you don’t donate much to someone with low
>> reputation points).
> That is true assuming the donations are made to an
> individual rather than to ‘whoever does X’.
Yes. In my vision, a developer says something “I believe I can do that in 5 months for 3000$”. Then donations open, and people start donating based on his reputation. If donations reach 3000$, he begins working. After 5 months, he delivers, and he gets voted. The code may or may not be accepted.
It is neither 1 nor 2. I have been a KDE developer since the project started, and have not been paid for any of it. I don’t have a problem with people getting paid to work on KDE, but I do have a problem with people getting paid on a feature-by-feature basis.
Because the whole “it’ll cause hacks” is just a red herring when you should know that crap hacks wouldn’t get accepted anyway.
And the maintainers would have to handle this – i.e. The feature is only half the work. The maintainer has to do the rest (including supporting the new code). And if we reject the feature, we have to face an angry developer, and the angry user who paid him. That’s without even mentioning possible legal issues. I maintain several apps, and I am NOT willing to assume responsibility for this.
Three steps for ya:
1. Change the preferences, KDE can be modified in infinite different ways
2. File bug reports for things that you think are bugs.
3. Use something else. If you don’t like KDE, but can’t be bothered to contribute in some way, then use something else. Check back once in a while, it continually improves.
Isn’t that what Xandros and/or Liinspire already doing? Aren’t part of their desktops already closed/proprietary?
But as we are in a capitalist society (majority of us anyway) we should understand that market forces will determine what is critical and what is not.
You will always need the proverbial carrot to entice developers, the real question is, in OSS land what is that carrot? money? fame? with OSS i highly doubt it is money.
People are selfish, there are few that are not, but most of us are selfish and will do FOSS work for whatever reason we have, be it fame, money, fun, etc.
So find THE carrot of the developers on the project you want a feature implemented, it might not be money, be polite, get to know them, sometimes a little persuasion from an online “friend” will get you farther than 10$ on a donation.
Not again…
First, why should users expect that their money will go to “y” and only “y”? Say every user in the world is willing to spend $1 and they all vote it towards the same feature. So one developer gets the windfall of the entire project? What about all the other hard working devs? Is that fair? How do you really decide who deserves the money? Particularly in a complicated and large project? Why can’t users be satisfied just to make a contribution to the overall project? Why does it have to have strings attatched and be earmarked for their pet concerns only? Basically, if that is the attitude, keep your money. It is selfishness in the face of generousity and that is plain rude. Worst of all, people who are saying “I don’t have this freedom to buy the features I want” should grow up. You don’t have that freedom anywhere. If you want custom software, that’s expensive beyond belief. When you are in the realm of “shrink-wrap” software that must satisfy hundreds of thousands of users from a single flavor then the stakes are even higher. When you purchase your next copy of Windows or Mac OS are you able to dictate what features your money will go to support? You make me laugh!! These products are being developed for (and given away to) *ALL* users, not *YOU* in particular.
And by the way, don’t take his comment too seriously — he meant that if there were no users *like that guy* it would be okay for the project. Besides, everyone is quick to forget — developers are users! That’s why non-developers have toys to play with to at all! The project would live on because at the heart of it, they are doing this for themselves and for fun (for goodness sake they are already doing it for free). They know what they are doing is very useful to a lot of other people, but that’s not what exclusively drives them. Still, F/OSS is about the user because typically developers give a rat’s ass if you like them personally or not. What they care about is whether you like their product. Check out any modern piece of F/OSS software. It may not be perfect, it may have some warts that are still in the process of being removed. But dollars to doughnuts it has happy users. A good fraction of those users are almost certainly going to be non-developers.
Finally, F/OSS is about the user. But the development process is about the developer. Users can participate when they just have to realize that they have to communicate in a way palatible to developers. Please people, let developers develop. Would you tell Michaelangelo what to paint? Would you tell Jimi Hendrix what notes to play? Would you tell your doctor how to operate?
Why is OS News stirring the pot repeatedly? Three such articles in less than a week? F/OSS is alive and well with millions of extremly happy users world wide. Product quantity, quality and usage is at all time high. …and thinks keep getting better. Yet somehow there appears to be low-level smear campaign that seems to be driven by spite and the inability for certain individuals to admit they have acted badly.
“All I can hear, I me mine
I me mine, I me mine
Even those tears, I me mine
I me mine, I me mine
No-one’s frightened of playing it
Everyone’s saying it
Flowing more freely than wine
All through the day I me mine”
If you read better, the original poster also said that the guarantee that the feature will be implemented can be relaxed to the guarantee that the feature will be worked on.
That doesn’t change the fact that the paying users would have the power to make the developers “work on” what they want.
I would say: let the developers take the direction they like – after all, they’re *volunteering* their time – and offer them bounties in order to get their attention. But, IMHO, you can’t demand for a *guarantee* that they will implement/work on a certain feature. That’s a bit too much.
Second of all, did anyone read the original post? The guy said he wanted a donation system, which is fine, but he also wanted a way to force developers to code features after the donations had reached a threshold.
Leo, you misunderstood the proposal completely. When the threshold is reached, it means a developer has already offered himself to implement the feature. No developer is being forced to do anything. They are free to accept or refuse offers.
We are just giving users the freedom to join their forces to sponsor specific features. No developer is forced to accept the offer.
>> I’m not sure how this would be tracked without a lot of
>> work on the part of the app maintainers.
> Simply, allow donators to vote for developers they funded, after he delivers
That could work, though I don’t know how responsive it would be.
Yes. In my vision, a developer says something “I believe I can do that in 5 months for 3000$”. Then donations open, and people start donating based on his reputation. If donations reach 3000$, he begins working. After 5 months, he delivers, and he gets voted. The code may or may not be accepted.
Ok, I see where you’re coming from. But surely this can be done already? If a developer is interested in offering to code stuff for money, they are already free to do it.
> Judging on how the angry comments winded down after I posted the special note, it was a GOOD idea to having done so, so the whining is on your part now.
No you’re wrong, the way you said things this time is no better, there was just less angry comments because everything had been said the last time. It didn’t help promoting your ideas, that’s what I tell you.
You don’t care about that, well, then it’s no surprise developers don’t care about what you ask them.
And what I mean by that is that the desktops should do as much as possible to entice developers to develop for their projects.
Even for smart, experienced develoeprs, the barriers of entry are high because of lack of documentation.
That, in turn, would get more user requests fulfilled because you have more developers working on the projects.
I felt that it was needed because people really did not get what I was trying to say. They completely misundestood my point and overblowned it. Judging on how the angry comments winded down after I posted the special note, it was a GOOD idea to having done so, so the whining is on your part now.
The problem here is your attitude towards volunteering developers since you have implied all of them. They did not misunderstand you, they are angry against your behaviour. You said english is not your first language, so aren’t many OSNews readers including me. In this case, it is clear you don’t work to admit your solely responsibility for that debacle. A simple apology would reduce that debacle
Leo, you misunderstood the proposal completely. When the threshold is reached, it means a developer has already offered himself to implement the feature.
That was not clarified until later in the thread.
But in any case, the idea is still dumb, for reasons which I will not reiterate, but which are nicely stated here:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=111070878407359&w=2
And anyway, this inane requirement to have people finish features in a certain time. How would this even be enforced? We’d need legal contracts. Are we going to start suing developers because they’re late on a feature? What about refunds? What if the feature was simple, but only because it is based on years of work by another developer?
Just stop and THINK for a few minutes about what a world of shit this would be for the KDE project.
“I felt that it was needed because people really did not get what I was trying to say.”
You felt the need to backpeddle because more than 50% of your readers are complaining about you (again).
Note, these comments are on topic so you need not moderate them.
Let me add this link to Federico’s answer to Eugenia’s first proposal of a web-based poll. Now, I’m sure it’s not what she chose to go around writting an editorial of how gnome’s developers don’t listen to users:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-March/msg001…
How wasn’t that mentioned in her editorial? It shows a deeper understanding of the issue on user-oriented development than her proposal.
Apple and MS do field investigation on their current or wanted clients (like when MS reps visitted companies asking what they liked in wordperfect to make Word attractive for them). You don’t see polls on Apple’s website filled with information that is, in the first place, subject to manipulation by hordes of zealots heading there from a Slashdot news post.
It’s nice to have ideas and propose them to your favorite project’s developers. But you too have to listen to what they say.
> And anyway, this inane requirement to have people finish
> features in a certain time. How would this even be
> enforced?
A reputation system. The developer himself defines the time and money he needs. Then, donations begin. If the overall donation reaches the threshold, he gets the money and starts coding. If, at the end of the time (that he has defined), he has not finished, he will loose reputation points because its donators will give him a bad rating. So next time people will not trust him.
The same happens if he does finish the task, but the code does not get accepted into KDE.
Speaking as a n00b, I don’t know what the big deal is.
Don’t like KDE? Fine, choose another. That’s what I did.
After huffing and puffing at the amount of RAM KDE took up, I turfed it, and installed Xfce. I haven’t looked back since. In fact, I find it the easiest modern DE I’ve used (if we are discounting the Mac). I don’t care for “gee whiz” features. I just want a simple, elegant interface that does what I want: mainly launching my apps, and making everything easily navigable. And what if I don’t like a certain feature? I simply replace it, as I did with xftree: I simply did a search on freshmeat, and picked up a Commander clone.
My point? Even as a n00b (I’ve only used Linux for three months), nothing is impeding me from getting what I want. If developers aren’t willing to implement a feature, move on and find someone who will.
Nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to use GNOME or KDE.
So next time people will not trust him.
Wicked. Remind me to claim a bug with a couple thousand donated to it. I run off with the money, and am never heard from again.
I’m sure I’ll be choked that I have a bad rating now.
Eugenia definitely hit a weak spot with her article. And there should be a discussion about establishing an effective OSS ‘markt research’ instead of flaming for the ‘freedom’ for developers. If big OSS projects like GNOME want to attract millions of users (actually there are 820 million PCs in the world today – see http://futurezone.orf.at/futurezone.orf?read=detail&id=262918&tmp=1… ) and want to battle oh so evil Micro$oft, they have to listen to the not so technical users, because they’re the vast majority. It’s a hard task to get into the mainstream – so you should listen carefully, which features are needed and which aren’t.
http://www.pycs.net/lateral/weblog/2005/03/13.html#P286
they have to listen to the not so technical users, because they’re the vast majority. It’s a hard task to get into the mainstream – so you should listen carefully, which features are needed and which aren’t.
I agree with what you said, as some gnome developers (you can read that in the link I left in my prior post).
The whole point is, as Havoc said in his blog, that the “mainstream” doesn’t read osnews, gnomedesktop or slashdot daily. Guess where did Eugenia want to announce the “user feedback polls”? And when gnome developers weren’t exactly enthusiastic with that, these editorials started.
P.S.: Here you have the link to the message:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-March/msg001…
You are talking about cheaters. Usually a cheater does not have a good reputation (unless he is a saint that suddenly turns bad, which I admit might happen).
So, if the cheater asks for much money, the threshold will probably not be reached, due to his low reputation. Even if it is reached, no single person will have donated much, for the same reason.
So the existence of cheaters does not mean the failure of the system. And yes, thinking of the cheater be sued is an interesting solution, but I don’t know how feasible.
..so… after all this, we could come to the conclusion that F/OSS is a combination of (mostly) people working for the simple pleasure of accomplishing tasks they regard as interesting, plus the general public having the opportunity of being users of the result of all this hobby (but serious) effort.
Ok… but not all developers are hobbyists, right?
Now… If I am so damm good developer that even a Company pays me to code freely on whatever I want… That’s the best job anyone could think of! But I am not sure that’s what majority has…
Then, we could think about a structure made to ADVISE developers on the most wanted (by users) developments. They would not be obligatory but they would be a way for users that can’t code KDE, GNOME or whatever else to feel really part of the community. People like me, who are interested on the subject, politically support the movement but can’t code!
I think nobody would be hurted by that and, if made seriously, developers would not feel bad to take a look sometimes and will really feel the need to do those hacks to solve the user’s problems.
Now… This should be separated from the bugzilla and alike structures that mix codders and users,and in a way I think the companies that employ people for OSS would also like the idea.
Don’t take Eugenia’s word for it.
Look at the software products that are being discussed (GNOME, KDE). Do you not get the feeling using them that the developers have been paying attention to users? I’m not saying they are “done”, but don’t they already show the necessary signs? Are they not improving steadily?
Do you really believe that the F/OSS movement is so naive and unsophisticated? Are there not many corporations putting money and mind-power into these efforts? Do you suppose that just because Eugenia says she represents the majority of users that she really does? Don’t worry, better minds have been working on these issues for quite awhile now. Keep the feedback coming — it does help, but so do other processes which the end-user, never aware of, never sees.
Thank you dekkard for that link. A concise summary of the points and excellent rebuttal.
No, but unfortunately someone that doesn’t read OSNews and know her for what she is may believe her to be reputable.
It’s very unfortunate.
I don’t know what she’s complaining about with GNOME really, I’d rather they fix the bugs and add the features they feel are important before they add a checkbox for some thing-a-ma-jig.
> Remember me to claim a bug which thousands donated to it.
Also, this does not make sense (with the proposed model). You cannot “claim a bug” after donations are made. Donations are directed to a specific developer, after he declares how much the money he need for the bug. You can’t “claim” donations that were not directed at you.
Instead of ranting to OSS projects and demanding features to them, why not to tell to your distro?, you payed money for it right?
This sort of things is a more client-company than user-project, the people from the OSS projects do it on their free time, for fun or whatever, but is their interests. Companies do it for money, they will try to appeal and support their clients.
You can’t “claim” donations that were not directed at you.
So? I claim to be able to fix it, and therefore get donations. And I don’t have a bad reputation because I’ve never scammed anyone before.