On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
> Of course I understand this. I also believe that people who don't
> contribute (which can include more than just writing code) shouldn't
> complain and bitch.
Yes, but what's considered complaining or bitching?
At the risk of getting on one of my pet themes, perhaps the chief
difficulty with Open Source software -- and believe me, I am a very big
fan of the process and its benefits -- is that (understandably) developers
tend to work on what meets their own needs, hoping that if other needs are
identified, others will come along and address them. It's especially bad
in the domain of user interface to core functionality, whether it's
expressed as configuration language, GUI, or documentation; if you use
Emacs and command-line interfaces, and understand regular expressions, the
likelihood you'll spend the cycles to design a newbie-friendly interface
when you could use them to code a feature you think is killer for your
purposes is, well, nearly nil.
Unfortunately, the people who most benefit from simplification and
graphical interface are the ones least prepared to write code. But their
inputs should hardly be reduced to the category of bitching and
whining; their needs are the ones that will make the difference between
guru-only deployment and pervasive adoption. And even if money is not a
direct motivator, the factors of pride, fame, and future compensation
("Let's hire the guy who wrote Majordomo 2!") play into it.
My requirements for an MLM are probably very different from Jason's -- at
the highest level, I need a package that does what eGroups does, plus
allows administration by mail.
Going through the discussion of what that means EARLY in the process,
getting input as it goes on even from us non-programmers, and listening to
us in the trade-offs of usability vs. functionality vs. availability --
these are not whining. And many packages would do a lot better by a
requirements-gathering process that admitted non-developers, early and
often, without considering them whiners.
--
ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG
PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114
"There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick
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