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KDEvelopers on KDE Users
An anonymous reader writes: "KDE developers spent some time this week on their mailing list discussing what motivates them and the extent to which user concerns figure in their decisions. Dennis E. Powell's column on Linux and Main draws excerpts from the exchange, in which he participated, and says that he believes a lot more of this kind of discussion is needed."
Someone said that Open Source will never effectively work on the desktop, because it's far too unstable; you can't program anything really useful for it without spending a lot of time and money nursing it through the inevitable changes the platforms around it create. I respectfully disagree, because I think that whenever there is a will, there's a way, and that when people need something, they're going to create it or maintain it.
There is a great deal of burnout being created by users demanding features in software that the developer isn't being paid for, too. KDE has mostly escaped this thus far, however there is some speculation that GNOME has more momentum because it's the underdog. Let's hope these two projects can continue to bring great things to the Linux desktop.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I tried a few times to get up and running with KDevelop. Have a KDE programmers book at home, tried every tutorial I could find.. And the results? The KDE programming book doesn't use KDevelop and the best result up till now is a KIO slave for hello world..
What I found to be the biggest problem with KDevelop is the lack of up to date documentation and tutorials. Whatever I found was always based on older versions, different templates etc. I haven't found 1 tutorial which I could go through from beginning to the end and end up with the results I should accourding to the description.
KDevelop is attractive to programmers who are not fluent in KDE, C++ and QT and lacking basic, but up to date and included, tutorials is IMHO one of the biggest things that stops new programmers from using it.
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
This article really exposes some issues about why many open source projects 'fail', or look like failures, in the eyes of many 'average joe' users.
No one is getting paid, therefore, things are only as good as what a developer wants, not what an end user may need.
Most of the comments I read focused on money. The problem is, I may *want* to donate money or actually pay for code. The way KDE in particular is coded, though, it makes it hard for others (the Kompany) to write software worth paying for on it (relative to other platforms). So there's a big disconnect there. If more care was taken with the underlying framework, it'd be much easier to have people writing apps that work with less concern for portability - the framework would help take care of that.
Tranisitioning from Win 95->98, or 98->2000 worked pretty well for most apps (excluding games - I dunno about those). People didn't need to go back and recompile apps and redistribute them, most just worked. Why can't it be that easy under KDE?
Back to the payment issue - many of these developers seem *averse* to ever making money from their efforts. Of course the developers don't *need* KDE users, but eventually the users won't need the developers becaus they'll migrate to something else. Without a critical mass of users, any project falls into obscurity. It's not impossible to imagine RH10, for example, not bundling KDE4 because early tests show *nothing* from KDE3 will work on it. "So what?" would be the answer from most KDE devs.
Instead of trying to capitalize on their efforts by creating something which is useful beyond their own immediate needs and longer lasting, many of these developers seem to wear it as a badge of honor that they are *only* in this for themselves, to hell with everyone else.
It'd be great to see something *like* Ximian for KDE - I prefer KDE to Gnome, but at this rate, Ximian seems to be going after user's needs more, and I may just have to switch at some point. DE aside, it's sad to see *SO MUCH POTENTIAL* being thrown away on projects that don't organize themselves effectively.
When you're 5, you have the attitudes and behaviours and respect for others that a 5 year old has (regardless of getting paid!). When you're 10, your attitude, behaviour and respect for others changes and is usually more mature. Same for 15, 20, etc. I don't see that same type of growth pattern happening in the KDE project - it's growing technically, but stagnating attitudinally(?).
creation science book
Granted not ever OS developer craves attention, and some don't even desire it, but deep down its always welcome.
I'm not an OS developer, but being self-employeed, its sometimes hard to get motivated, other times its very easy.
The OS community needs to become much more appreciative to prevent burnout . The article says it best.
Tournament Management Online &
Open source coders are more interested in having fun than in producing usable software?? Stallman must be rolling in his gra..er...chair...
If this is a surprise to anyone,they haven't been using linux lately. It's a textbook case of having NO interest, talent, or effort spent on making something usable to an *end-user*. This article and the related discussion threads explain better than anything else could why that is so.
By contrast, look at Mac OSX. Apple decided to make thier next release run on a unix core, and voila, for the first time in 20 odd years, a damn fine user environment for Unix! Methinks it was about time someone gave a shit about the users instead of endlessly insulting them for not being 3l337 enough to use what they were given.
there were some points like "this is my hobby, my free time, I dont want to be critizised because of what I have done with it", which brought my attention. The user feedback - even in form of critics - is essential for this kind of hobby. If you dont want to be critizised - dont publish it, if you want to become better - ask for it. And if you want the community to answer to your requests, give something back and answer to their ones.
The good software meets its users needs. And hobby or not, if you want to be good in it, users feedback will only make you better.
Rarest of all are requirements and architectural documents. Essentially there is no way to validate most Open Source Software because there exists no requirements or architecutural documents. Anything goes.
These factors make real, legitimate quality assurance an impossibilty. At best QA on Open Source Software consists of ad hoc bug fixes and low level "lint" style syntax checks. Without requirements documents, there is no way to achieve QA in-the-large.
I think you're target audience has proven, on more than one occasion, that collecting information like that is frowned upon.
I disagree. It depends on who's collecting the information - do you trust them?
I don't like the fact that Windows XP seems to communicate regularly with Microsoft. But I'm happy to run the test builds of Mozilla that send crash info. back to the Mozilla team. I'm sure many others in the OSS community feel the same way.
Good user feedback is essential to a non-commercial free software project, but bad user feedback can kill it. It is the difference between writing
"I love your software, but wouldn't it be cool if it could do XYZZY?"
and
"Your software sucks because it can't do XYZZY!"
The first kind of feedback makes the developers feel appreciated, the second make them think if this is really how they want to spend their free time.
So users essentially have the choice of whether they will be part of the solution, or part of the problem.
Some other user advice:
- Never make demands. It is increadible aggrevating when someone think they have a right to your free time. This also includes formulations like "your project must do XYZZY, otherwise it looks unprofessionel".
- Never make threats, even if you think of them as facts. This includes "unless you implement XYZZY, I'll have to switch to ". If you want to switch, just do it, don't advertise it.
- Never, ever try to take the user community hostage. E.g. "The developer isn't listening to the users, because he doesn't implement XYZZY."
Always remember, it is the developer who (perhaps) do you a favor by releasing his code. You are not doing the developer a favor by using the code. If you feel that relation emotionally stressful, gratis software is probably not for you. Find someone you can pay for the software (whether it is open source or not), in that case it becomes an ordinary economic transaction, where the two parties are equals.
A couple years ago, the alpha geek where I work, who has since moved on the do kernel hacking somewhere else, made an off hand remark that he hated it when people used the stuff he wrote.
"That's odd," I replied. "We write programs to solve people's problems."
"No," he shot back. "I code because I like to code. As soon as a user gets hold of it, all he does is start complaining and asking for more features."
Which is true enough, I've since learned. Users' wants are ill-defined as well as infinite.
This all reminds me of my Software Development Rules from a few months ago.
Software Wars