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How Long Should an Open Source Project Support Users?
Ubuntu Kitten writes "Since October the community-generated database of cards known to work with Ndiswrapper has been down. This is apparently due to an on-going site redesign, but right now the usual URL simply directs to a stock Sourceforge page. Without the database, the software's usability is severely diminished but this raises an interesting question: Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users? If so, for how long should the support last? Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites. While developers can sometimes find sponsorship, is it possible to get sponsorship simply for infrastructure and user services?"
Not exactly. Here's some examples where a non-technical user might help out, even if it's not in the form of cash:
I have a couple of open source projects that are sorely in need of translators. I don't speak any languages other than English, and a little bit of very broken French and Spanish. If someone wants to provide me good translations of UI strings, help bubbles, messages, dialogs, etc., in their native tongue I'll gladly add good i18n and l10n support to the projects.
Neither of these projects have good end-user documentation. I need someone with good technical writing skills to write the user docs for them. You don't need to any programming, just how to use the program.
Evangelism: one project has existed for two years now, and the other is just about to have its first release. I need people to help get the word out about the projects.
You see what I mean? You don't need to be a programmer to help an OSS project. You just need to care.
My blog
http://web.archive.org/web/20080113194857/ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.php?/component/option,com_openwiki/Itemid,33/id,list/