OSNews

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.

Yes... I have nothing but gratitude for free software developers. Of course, they're human and make mistakes, but if you think you can do better just start your own project and we'll see then how well you manage it.

Throwing shit at others and bad mouthing is easy, making software and making everyone happy with your hard decisions is way harder.

To all those Free software developers who might be reading this: thank you!!!!

Sorry if I sound rude, but the whole "reputation" system sounds to me like absolutely failed in the medium to long term.

The only way OSS will reach enterprise levels is by getting the enterprises involved. No bounties/donations/praising, but real companies with the resources to do real usability studies on free apps and pay the salary of developers dedicated to improving free software based on the results.

KDE, Gnome and other projects are heading in this direction, and that's for the best. Cause there will always be hobbyists to make free software that doesn't adhere to enterprise standards, but they will be free to incorporate what they like about those projects in them.

Paying hobbyists for puntual, enthusiast-promoted changes won't get free software near Apple's quality at all.

Oh, guess what. I just read Waldo Bastian seems to think the same way:

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=111075429612492&w=2

<p>KDE with users but no developers = a KDE where no progress happens.</p>
<p>Obviously.</p>
<p>KDE with developers but no users = a KDE where progress happens. </p>
<p>But there wouldn't be any point to progress without users. You HAVE to have users.<p>
<p>Therefore, he would choose a KDE that will continue to evolve even withou many users over one with many users, but no progress.</p>
<p>Like I siad - without users there won't be progress and obviously without developers either. Users do contribute myself - I myself have. Go ahead and look at KDE 3.3+ and notice the icons when you right click on the kicker. I think his way of thinking if flawed - you can't have one, you'll have to have both.

> Sorry if I sound rude, but the whole "reputation" system
> sounds to me like absolutely failed in the medium to long
> term.

Actually, the long term is precisely where the reputation system excels. Have you read something about the theory of games? The prisoner's dilemma, stuff like that? Cheaters tend to succumb in the reiterated prisoner's dilemma.

[Hugely off topic: I suggest reading "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, an enilghtening book about evolution and the theory of games]

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.

True, but prisoner's dilemma shows that the 'always cheats' prisoner is the winner in the short term (which is often the case for a lot of open source developers).

"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.

Actually, the long term is precisely where the reputation system excels. Have you read something about the theory of games? The prisoner's dilemma, stuff like that? Cheaters tend to succumb in the reiterated prisoner's dilemma.

Sorry, but my long term and your long term seem to be very different.

What do you think KDE developers would prefer? Having a job at Novell/Suse with a constant salary per month, or depending on reputations systems to get some income variable according to the free time they want to spend in satisfying strangers' requests?

Also, you see this as a game with prizes, but the hobbyists in the first place don't expect to get rich with their hobbies. Though the game theory may sound nice in an academic way, we aren't talking about guinea pigs here.

I've known people who could make much money painting figures for other warhammer 40k fans, and wouldn't cause they like it as a hobby for themselves, not some sort of job with no real schedule and no guarantee for the future. This is not different.

Would you tell Michaelangelo what to paint?

Since he worked on commission then yes. You'd tell him what you want and he'd paint/sculpt something appropriate otherwise he didn't get paid.

Would you tell Jimi Hendrix what notes to play?

Nope, but you'd be pretty disappointed if you turned up at a Hendrix concert to find him sitting on a stool, wearing corduroy pants and strumming a banjo. He knew what his fans wanted and being the artist he was he gave it to them.

Would you tell your doctor how to operate?

Probably not, but if I'm having an eye operation and they start feeling my bollocks then I'm going to begin asking questions

KDE dont need of this shitty methods to develop a great
desktop....

Eugenia, I have a lot of respect for you for your "pot-stirring".

Some people, especially the devs themselves, will probably say that you're insulting developers and that you're "whining about what you get for free" or "demeaning the work on volunteers who so unselfishly give you a gift". Don't listen to them for a second.

The thing is, these projects that have felt so insulted by your articles have been actively lobbying to have their software put into places like school systems and governments, where the users will be told by their bosses or teachers what software they will use will and have no choice to do otherwise. So when the FOSS projects lobby to have their software installed on these machines, they are effectively trying to force other people to use their software.

As far as I'm concerned, when a software project tries to insert its product into areas where people will be forced to use their software, they stop being hobbyists or volunteers, and any demand made of them is entirely justified, as is any criticism of that software project when the legitimate demands and grievances of those people are not being taken into account.

On the desktop, there are no volunteers.

The whole situation is simple, actually. The base of all is - the developers don't owe you ANYTHING

They are either paid by a company - they owe it to the company. If you are a customer of that company - the company owes it to you. Same as with Microsoft or Apple or Sun or HP. You are unsatisfied with the product you get - complain to the company.

Or the developers are not paid for they work, they do it in their own time. Then they owe it to their reputation, to their close ones, to their own time and to their fellow co-developers. If you download something from the web - be grateful you could do it and you can use it. I am.

Unless you give back something to the community, don't make any demands. Money, as has been discussed already, might not be the best way to give back. If you do something for fun, for the rewarding feeling inside that you made something that makes sense, you don't want to be tied down, you don't want to be forced to do something you don't like.

IMHO, there's nothing to be discussed. Developers "own" the project. Unless their goal is to please users (which mostly comes only after "scratching own itch" and "fun"), they have no obligation to fulfill all users' wishes.

p.s. reading about comments being deleted by Eugenia, let this be a test, how open for discussion is this site.

I encourage everyone to read this post:

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=111075429612492&w=2

by Waldo Bastian. Especially the paragraphs near the end.

I fully agree that the bounty idea is half-baked and you are probably very right about involvement of larger entities. Lets not forget what we are up against, though:

"I got the answer I expected from the Novell/Sun/Red-Hat people: "regarding market research, we care about it only when happens from our marketing department and to our customers". They don't care about the "generic" Gnome user. That's ok. Understandable. These guys have a business to run."

Sigh. Of course, there are no apologies given to volounteers despite the fact that they have lives to live.

So how do you get quality devs to be responsive to your needs? (Dekkard knows) One sure fire way is to hire them. Not little conditional bounties, but full-out, full-time responsibilities with an office and suitable compensation and rewards. You build engineering teams and testing teams and deployment teams. You conduct research. You market. You make strategic decisions and when the winds shift you walk into your crack-pot development group's bullpen and you say you need them to work on the following priorities. And they do. That kind of commitment takes a lot of money, but that seems to be lost on some people. They want to act as they themselves were Novell or Redhat or IBM but they don't have a campus to walk across or a bullpen to walk into or developers on staff that they can direct. So they harass volounteers on public forums and throw grenades in every direction. Fortunately, only a very small minority of users act like that. Unfortunately, they tend to be one person wrecking crews.

And of course, there are corporations donating back to the "generic" efforts. For example, GNOME now includes Evolution (for better or worse). The various desktop projects are being geared towards (and benefiting from) full standards support published by freedesktop and xorg which both have backing, etc.

Pretty much everything that Eugenia claims to be non-existent in fact DOES exist. She just wants the personal touch but isn't willing to become the customer of a corporation to get it.

There's a link at the bottom of the page if you want to read moderated down comments. I expect the one you just posted will join them.

> The base of all is - the developers don't owe you ANYTHING

This is exactly what we want to change :-)

We want to give developers the freedom to owe something to users. The freedom to choose to be paid for a feature.

The thing is, these projects that have felt so insulted by your articles have been actively lobbying to have their software put into places like school systems and governments, where the users will be told by their bosses or teachers what software they will use will and have no choice to do otherwise. So when the FOSS projects lobby to have their software installed on these machines, they are effectively trying to force other people to use their software.

You would benefit from reading the post I linked to. But since most people are too lazy to click on a link, I will quote the relevant paragraph for you:

The other problem is that there are people who are really fed up with Microsoft's monopoly and would nothing better than to replace it with Linux and free software today. They like that to happen so much that they tell
everyone that Linux and open source software is great and can solve all their problems. And in their enthusiasm they may get a little bit overboard and exagerate a little bit. Now the problem starts when someone who has been told
that Linux can solve all his problems, then discovers that he happens to have a problem that it can't solve. He will get all angry because "they" told him it could solve all his problems, and then he goes to "kde-devel@kde.org" to
complain about it and he finds "developers" that make software because that happens to be what they like to spend their sunday afternoon on. And these "developers" shrug and think he is a loony because they never told him that their software would solve all his problems. At first this seems very strange till you realize that the "they" who told you about Linux yesterday may not be the same as the "developers" that you talk with today. And most (but not all, take me for example) of these "developers" are fairly reasonable and are quite sympathetic to your situation and may be able to help you, but in the end they don't owe you anything and it is still all about how they spend their free sunday afternoon that you are talking about. - WALDO BASTIAN

The proposed system isn't a bounty system.
Bounties wouldn't hurt the project or the developers in any way, since bounties can be totally disregarded when the requested feature is considered not appropriate by the devs.

Dear KDE Devs,

Here is $10 million dollars. To ease compatability problems for users of the world. Please make your desktop look and feel like Windows 95. Please add make your API mimic the Windows API, but make the each function take 20 useless arguments.
Also, please get rid of all calls to free() and make all malloc()'s four times larger than they need to be. The bigger and slower KDE becomes, the better. Don't worry, this will work and make KDE better. Besides, you have your $10 mil, just do what I say.

Thanks,
Bill G.

We want to give developers the freedom to owe something to users. The freedom to choose to be paid for a feature.

They already have this freedom. Look at the kmail developer, he accepts money for features already.

http://www.kontact.org/shopping/sanders.php

The top of that list is actually the feature request that generated so much commotion.

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17513

This bug is over four years old, and has over 2000 votes. One developer is willing to fix it, accepts money towards this task, and even has an easy way to donate to him.

So how much have people donated to him? A measly 125 USD!!

This extremely high profile bug, 4 years old, has only gotten $125! This indicates that this whole idea is retarded from the get go. What would a feature request get that only had 200 votes or so? 12 bucks? Let me know when you find a developer willing to code more than 10 minutes for 12 bucks.

> This extremely high profile bug, 4 years old, has only gotten $125!

It's not a bug but a feature request.

bounties can be totally disregarded when the requested feature is considered not appropriate by the devs.
A small clarification. What I meant was: bounties can be totally disregarded, PERIOD. Even for no reason at all. Otherwise they wouldn't be bounties.

It's not a bug but a feature request.

Sorry, mistype.

This has been discussed too. The solution is democracy. Users (and developers) should be able vote for or *against* a proposal. So, silly features (or malicious features) would not be accepted even if paid for.

We want to give developers the freedom to owe something to users. The freedom to choose to be paid for a feature.

What if we don't want that "freedom"? What if we are suspicious of anyone who claims to be "giving" us a freedom? Especially when dollars are attatched to it. Besides, if your goal is to purchase developer time to be spent on tasks you prioritize nothing stops you. Form a corporation and hire an engineering department. It'll cost you more than your typical pay pal donation but its the only way to make a system like that work to anyones satisfaction. Then there is also no confusion about who sets the agenda, who decides on timeframes and who must pay the consequences for failure. Nor is there are confusions as to who has "freedom" or who is the boss and who is the minion.

i guess when she asked if she could do a poll on osnews about the most wanted feature, and just wanted to know if the gnome devs would do it (or if she would be wasting her time), what she ACTUALLY meant was that the gnomes devs would have a choice whether or not to act or her poll, making all the rants around this subject completely irrelivent.

this stuff isnt new, this is the way things have alwas been, and the only way opensource can work. im sorry if eugenia is now disillusioned, but her (and others) reactions to this have been childish, inflammatory, and wildly counter productive.

This is exactly what we want to change :-)

We want to give developers the freedom to owe something to users. The freedom to choose to be paid for a feature.

Did you read till the end of my post?

Money, as has been discussed already, might not be the best way to give back. If you do something for fun, for the rewarding feeling inside that you made something that makes sense, you don't want to be tied down, you don't want to be forced to do something you don't like.

I also don't think, somebody took "the freedom to choose to be paid for a feature" away from the developers. They have it. They can ask for donations, they can try to get a job at a company, they can set-up an "anti-bounty". If they didn't, they probably have reasons why.

At the end of the day, what's required here is decent requirements engineering.

Having people pay for features is unacceptable from a development POV, as people will just pay for gold-plating.

At the other end, developers maybe ignoring what users feel are truly important.

As projects like GNOME/KDE's eventual targets are either corporate IT or average-joe. This isn't, say "vim" or "Eclipse", and you can't expect "users" to code the features they want, even if they're capable of using bugzilla.

Introspection by the developer is the worst form of requirements gathering.
We need the full range of requirements gathering techniques - user interviews, role plays, observation, ethnographic techniques etc... I'm sure Microsoft/Apple spend millions of dollars on these kind of things.

I think we just need more funding.

Waldo bastian sent me his apologies about the goat stuff via the list, and now the discussion seems to get back into "brain" mode.

Anyone who suggests that Hendrix played "what his fans wanted" not only has a terrible grasp on cause and effect but also never heard Jimi play. It's actually quite a good analogy. You either like Jimi's music or your don't. You either take it with good grace or you piss off and listen to someone else. The difference between Hendrix and GNOME (among many) is that you actually have the option of taking the work of the GNOME project and doing whatever the hell you want with it. So you've got your cake, and you can eat it too, and STILL you complain.

Talk about the subject, but any personal attacks are out of order and anyone guilty of it should be ashamed of themselves.

Lets look at it, Open source as got an attack, bit wow

Read on her how many times OSX and XP are attacked without getting personal against the owner of the website, to all you lInux guys, grow up

What is wrong with the idea of prizes? Say if I want some feature implemented *really* urgently. I can simply put a bugzilla submission, attach a price tag to it, and wait till a developer comes along and says, "hey, I can implement that feature, and make a bucks doing so".

If I were a developer, and some guy said, "I really need xyz feature, I'm willing to pay $100 for your time", that would *definately* motivate me to create that particular feature or fix that particular bug.

Anyone who suggests that Hendrix played "what his fans wanted" not only has a terrible grasp on cause and effect but also never heard Jimi play.

Play? No, he played what he wanted.

If you'd bothered to actually read what I said you'd have realised I wasn't talking about the music.

...you turned up at a Hendrix concert...

You already know that people showing up at a Hendrix concert are going to like the music. What great performers like Hendrix manage to do is take that great music and turn it into a great concert. They can't do that without understanding what their fans want (Sometimes before the fans do).

Anyone who seriously believes a great show can be produced without considering the desires of the audience is living in a fantasy world.

I think the idea that free and open software could somehow replace commercial software has now died.

It's not that volunteer developers are obligated to help others, it's just that only a very small percentage of the population could ever hope to understand a large software project and modify according to their needs and desires.

Most people are willing to pay for something that works the way they want. Where a free solution is 'good enough', some will use it. Where a commercial product is great, many will buy.

I second that. Developpers and Sysadmins will use Gnome, KDE and Linux. Businessmen, Sales people, Marketing, Engineering and the rest of us prefer to invest in something serious, to rely on, and user-oriented.

Selfish and arrogant FOSS: No thanks, I'll stick with WinXP or Mac OS X, they both work great for me, and I don't mind paying.

Regarding the Kmail feature: IMHO the reason why there were few donations is one of visibility. The system only works if people know that they can donate for somethings. At least, we need to activate the feature site-wide, and put big "donate" buttons besides each feature. Then users will begin to notice. And even after they notice, some time will be needed for the idea to make its way in their mind. This is IMHO the kind of thing that starts slow but then explodes, as people slowly realize they are really in charge, and begin to feel like they are part of the process.

It's funny how OSNews posts none of the interesting KDE information and news that comes out week after week and that is beneficial to Users but much more advanced than anything GNOME has to offer.

When it comes time to troll and bash KDE though, Eugenia is ready.

and be thankfull to FOSS becouse at least you can use it threat and get a price cut.

And if you showed up to Jimi Hendrix concert and he did basically what you expected but didn't play all the songs you wanted? GNOME and KDE aren't Hendrix playing banjo. They are Hendrix putting on a great performance but playing 3rd Rock From The Sun where you would have rathered Purple Haze. Perhaps, though, everyone else was happy with his selection.

The real point is that there is a difference between opinion and knowledge. Whereas all listeners of music are apt to have an opinion, most have no clue as to WHAT Hendrix is doing, or HOW he is doing it or even WHY he is doing it. Moreso, before he did it, they likely didn't even realize that might be what they wanted. In other words, they wouldn't even have been able to ask. Notice too that Hendrix doesn't have to ask the fans anything. He need only observe their behavior to know if something works or not.

Besides who is to say that Hendrix playing a banjo wouldn't BLOW YOUR MIND? That's a big disrespect there and you probably don't realize it. Artists break boundaries all the time. You think you know, but you don't know. Hendrix has a much better idea of how to make good music than the typical concert goer ever can hope to have. That was one of the points that came out in the GNOME discussion. For example, a lot of users have opinions on how to fix (some specific feature) are adamant about it. However, they don't know what is best. It could be that a superior yet uncovered design exists that sidestep the problems entirely and makes their feature opinions moot because that element no longer exists in the new design. That's why developers have to watch what people do rather than ask them what they want. Its good to know what they say they want but that doesn't mean that's what will serve them best. This is not software specific. Your doctor asks you how you feel, but he still tests your blood and listens to your heart. Ever since BS Skinner we know that it is more objective to study behaviour rather than to resort to introspection.

AC if you notice, EUGINE posts storys that are submitted, not storys by herself, try submitting something by yourself, otherwise, don;t bother visitng if you think its just a troll sitr

I guess with the assassination of GNOME last week, the palace captains should have known that KDE was next, and sure enough, the other shoe dropped at OS NEWS.

Not suprisingly, the developers quoted first from GNOME and then from KDE, were not crazy about common users demanding a voice in the process-developers, no matter what the project, probably have a common base on some issues.

Throw in some "Animal Planet" references, and lo, KDE is now the bad guy, with GNOME lying in a gutter somewhere, already mugged!

Selfish and arrogant FOSS: No thanks, I'll stick with WinXP or Mac OS X, they both work great for me, and I don't mind paying.

Good for you, you are making a pragmatic and wise choice that fulfills your needs. Tell me though, how exactly is FOSS selfish (I'll give you the arrogant as a gimme)? What parts of FREE and FREEDOM do you not understand?

Why do i get the feeling developers think users can only suggest dumb things? maybe they have some really good ideas, but if they usually get the FUD reaction to ideas little improvement will be made.

For example the applications 'df' (free disk space), 'free' (free memory, which should have been called mf) and 'vmstat' (virtual memory stats) have totally different command line options for the same (-v and -V, one has human readable the other not. etc etc..). For a user the is really confusing, i still don't know which arguments to use after 4 years.

i'm sure if i file a "bug report" for this i get flamed to death, if anyone claims otherwise give me access to the CVS and i'll fix it (yes, i'm a developer ).

*You* try submitting pro-KDE articles and see if they aren't rejected.

yep, but the thing needed to make them true in FOSS it's not money, it's leadership. Maybe it's needed a Simple-Users Group that coordinates Feature-Requests, encourage developers, make usability studies, help with documentation, find bugs and promote OSS (telling the good and bad parts, rejecting any closed format...). This must come from Users, developers have given more than enough.

Why do i get the feeling developers think users can only suggest dumb things?

No, no. Of course users will have good ideas. Its just that users can't be trusted to know the difference between a good idea and a bad idea. Particularly in the context of the entire project and all other users. Majority rules selection doesn't work either (particularly when you can't realistically get a quorum anyhow).

As for the df issue -- sigh. You won't file a bug report but you want CVS access? Is that reasonable? Besides, isn't df an old-school admin tool? Are the types of users being talked about likely to even care about it? If you are in a position to fix it, why not do so and submit a patch to the maintainer? Even if it isn't accepted, nothing stops YOU from using your patches, yes? That is freedom!

OK, have you submitted a KDE article and being rejected?
I recall I've submitted two aticles on OSX, one posted, one rejected

Regarding the Kmail feature: IMHO the reason why there were few donations is one of visibility. The system only works if people know that they can donate for somethings.

Fair enough. But in this case there is actually a post providing a link to the site where one could donate to implement this feature. This post has been there for almost a year. Yes it's not as prominent as a donate button, but I'm sure a few thousand people read that post, and still only scraped together a measly $125.

And @kaiwa
If I were a developer, and some guy said, "I really need xyz feature, I'm willing to pay $100 for your time", that would *definately* motivate me to create that particular feature or fix that particular bug.

That may motivate you, but not necessarily many developers. They are mostly in this for the fun of it, not the money. I highly doubt someone could make a living from fixing bugs and collecting these type of rewards. They would have to be incredibly skilled in all aspects of KDE, in which case they could probably get a much better job working for one of the Linux companies.

Just wanted to say 'thanks' for the discussion.

To clarify, the comment with the link is comment 25 by stephen binner attached to
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17513

All of this negative bullshit is really bumming me out.

I came over to the Linux camp over 5 years ago and have been enjoying the freedom of choice I have while using it. But all of this "finger pointing" is really bumming me out, because I was under the impression that my fellow Linux users were positive, bright, mature people. The last few days have proven to me otherwise. At least regarding the majority of the posts.

We're all part of the same group regardless of title (dev or user) We're all users of the same thing, Linux. At least that's how I see it. I just wish all of this bickering would stop and that people would just stop and look around for a second. Realize that nothing is being acomplished as we post all of this "fud" "trolling" or whatever you want to call it.

Serenity Now Damn it!

Eugenia, you're breaking my heart
You're shaking my confidence daily
Eugenia, I'm down on my knees
I'm begging you please to come home
Come on home

Thank you, and I'll see y'all in the "moderated down" section.

I'm not sure that I understand why there was much controversy over the article you wrote. To me, it was fairly clear what you were saying. Some things need to be implemented in OSS if we want Linux/OSS to grow and have a larger user base.

Don't use Gnome or KDE, there are window managers who do the job faster and without problems.

Whereas all listeners of music are apt to have an opinion, most have no clue as to WHAT Hendrix is doing, or HOW he is doing it or even WHY he is doing it. Moreso, before he did it, they likely didn't even realize that might be what they wanted.

My post:

They can't do that without understanding what their fans want (Sometimes before the fans do).

It'd be nice if you didn't create my side of the argument for me and instead tried to read what I write.

Besides who is to say that Hendrix playing a banjo wouldn't BLOW YOUR MIND?

Hendrix could probably blow people away playing paper and a comb. It doesn't change the fact that people would be seriously confused if they had showed up for a Hendrix concert and found him doing a Cliff Richard set. Would they still haved enjoyed it? Probably. Would they have preferred a Hendrix set? Probably.

That's a big disrespect there and you probably don't realize it.

You trying to put words in my mouth is downright insulting.

For example, a lot of users have opinions on how to fix (some specific feature) are adamant about it. However, they don't know what is best.

It's supremely arrogant to assume the developers always know better than the users. It's true that there are some very stupid requests that developers (And anyone else with half a brain) just know won't work. It's also true that there will be some useful requests that the developers won't have even thought of. Ignoring the useful ones to pursue a personal agenda is just stupid (I'm not referring to any specific dev or project here).

Notice too that Hendrix doesn't have to ask the fans anything. He need only observe their behavior to know if something works or not.
...
That's why developers have to watch what people do rather than ask them what they want.

Which is the point I am trying to make (Yes, I did have one). Developers without the commercial backing to do large scale user trials don't HAVE direct observation data. The only real data they have is secondary and if they treat user requests as background noise then they are cutting that down even further. User feedback is the only real clue to user behaviour that a lot of these projects have.

It's unfortunate that the majority of people will only give feedback when they think something is wrong or they want something changed (Not a situation unique to software). That makes the amount of criticism seem artifically high compared to the praise, and nobody likes to be criticised all the time, but it doesn't mean some of that feedback isn't useful.

***

O/T:
Yup, I like Hendrix. I love his music and I think the man was a genius. However the first thing that I remember isn't a particular song, it isn't even the man himself, it's him using lighter fluid to set his guitar on fire...total showmanship.
We're not talking about some manufactured boy band here, so I don't know if he ever sat down and consciously thought about what the fans wanted, but even if he didn't he somehow managed to do it anyway.

Pure genius.

[i]But you are right about one thing: we are not an advocate of the movement. But neither we are an advocate of the closed source reality. OSNews is NOT a Linux/F/OSS site (like NewsForge is for example). OSNews is simply a tech site. So, don't expect us to particularly advocate one or the other.[i]

But you run and mantain gnomefiles.org. Which is a gnome specific repository of OSS applications. Surely you can't be so two faced that you would create a site advocating OSS (specifically gnome and it's applications) yet at the same time evangelize here that you have NO bias. Where is the macosxfiles.org? the riscosfiles.org? the kdefiles.org?

pity.

The main driving force today for working on OSS projects is to build a list of skills to later help get one a job with a consulting firm, software company or company needing IT solutions. They get both a skilled person on various tasks as well as a seasoned individual on an operating system platform without having to invest a lot of training internally. This saves companies money, period.

Linux needs to embrace the mass consumer if they ever expect to knock Windows off. And when Linux goes up against OS X as an alternate on PowerPC they are at the base of K2 looking to reach the summit before they will convince a new Mac buyer [not a developer] to not use OS X.

Linux needs start embracing its current user base that have been extremely loyal or they will become a niche product like the many BSDs [OS X excluded] who are known for their server capabilities, first and foremost.

The major developers have all either become highly paid developers for companies like IBM, Novell, RedHat, so on or so forth, or soon will be and we know they have the clout on what does or does not happen, in user space.

This is suicide. We former NeXT employees know all too well how the elitist view the world saw of NeXT buried any future user base.

So I'm sitting down after my Hendrix post, watching a little TV and I get hit by a very strange sequence of thoughts indeed.

I start thinking about the film The Bodyguard (For those that haven't seen it Whitney Houston plays a singer who is being stalked and Kevin Costner plays a bodyguard who's trying to protect her).

There's a particular scene that I'm thinking of here. In this scene Houston's character is performing on stage and everything is going fine, everyone's having a good time, until something happens (Can't remember what). Suddenly it's pandemonium. She's dragged into the crowd, and people are ripping off parts of her costume, stealing her microphone etc, before Costner does the hero thing and saves her.

Now these people weren't trying to mug her. They were her fans. They were trying to get a piece of her. They thought that being a fan, by buying the records, by going to the concert somehow entitled them to get more from her than she was already giving them.

It's a film, it's not real, but how far from real is it? We can see sports fans cursing their team for not winning. Film fans bad mouthing stars because they didn't sign enough autographs at a premiere. Music fans getting angry because someone was sick and had to cancel, despite getting a refund. Along with thousands of celebrity stalkers.

Something in these fans head makes them believe they can demand more of these celebrities than they would ever demand of a normal person, or even themselves. Somewhere between putting up posters, wearing a shirt, or buying records they've started to feel that they somehow possess a part of these people, that they deserve whatever it is they are asking for, that they are totally justified in being upset when their demands aren't met.

What's that got to do with software?

Well there aren't many celebrity programmers, but there are definitely a number of very popular projects. I often see terms like 'zealot' and 'fanboy/girl' in the comments of this site. I normally dismiss it as everyday trolling, but what if somewhere along the line there's actually a basis for it?

Could it be for some people that in using a project, supporting a project, perhaps even advocating a project to friends they believe that they have become a much bigger part of the project than simply being a user? That because of their perceived involvment they can expect to demand the attention of the devs?

In short, have certain sections of the OSS community become fans not users? Not the everyday 'Watch the football on the weekend' fans, but the more extreme sort who wrap up a large part of their own identity as being a supporter of their team. Ok, so maybe they aren't buying faeces and used chewing gum on eBay, but who knows what the future may hold (Devs should make sure to flush at conferences :>). Perhaps some of the larger projects are going to find that they NEED a buffer between the devs and the users.

As I said at the start, it's a strange sequence of thoughts. I don't know if I've managed to explain what I was thinking very well (It's 4am), and this post will probably be buried in the number of comments in this thread, but it seemed like an interesting enough perspective that I should make a post about it.

Could it be for some people that in using a project, supporting a project, perhaps even advocating a project to friends they believe that they have become a much bigger part of the project than simply being a user? That because of their perceived involvment they can expect to demand the attention of the devs?

Ha Ha! Have you been paying attention for the last 5 years? Have you ever visited Slashdot? Are you seriously saying that you haven’t figured this out until now? The fact that these people take their software WAY too seriously has been beaten to death for years now (adequacy.org). Get with the program.

"which illustrates once more the developer-centric nature of F/OSS (in contrast to the more user-centric nature of commercial products)"
I really don't get this comment eh - show me where users can give feedback to Microsoft (or any other commercial developer) and get their features added?

...show me where users can give feedback to Microsoft (or any other commercial developer) and get their features added?

Right here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=33353

Here's some more:

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=32853

Insightful +1

at least we have the right to suggest, dont we?

unlike os x or windows...

I used to really like osnews

"that's feedback filtered by a special team, not by the developers who are already under a lot of pressure"

Hence the sublime genius behind posting all that unproductive rubbish to desktop-devel-list......

...where commercial software is user focused? Seriously. Anyone seen it? When was the last time Microsoft responded to anyone's email about required features? Since when was mandatory DRM user focused? Where's the Apple bugzilla? Anyone seen it?

Nobody even knows who you are and could care less about your one man boycott.

Go start a geocities website and rant all you want you mental midget.

I'll do the web poll up later, but these are the results: ...

I think bounties is the way to go. They are working very well for Gnome and Horde right now. A system can be placed on KDE page that any company who desires (distribution, or private) can place a bounty (after approval of KDE developers) on a feature they want and any developer up to the task can work on it for the $$$.

Ok, the whole hendrix analogy is starting to confuse more than help.

It's unfortunate that the majority of people will only give feedback when they think something is wrong or they want something changed (Not a situation unique to software). That makes the amount of criticism seem artifically high compared to the praise, and nobody likes to be criticised all the time, but it doesn't mean some of that feedback isn't useful.

Of course not. No dev ever said they don't listen to user feedback or don't care at all. They do. Just because devs are saying that they will work on what they enjoy (which may be influenced by users) doesn't mean they will ignore everything users are saying. They're just not going to implement unreasonable requests.


** below is responding to something else that just popped into my head**

Saying that if developers don't want to code user requested features, they should make way for people that do, is naive. First of all, the current developers are not standing in anyone's way, and if there were a throng of new developers just aching to implement some new features, they'd already be working on it.

I work on a OSS project and I'm in constant contact with users. The fact that these conversations are happening at all is a sign of that - (normal) users have much easier access to OSS developers then closed source ones. I think here at osnews we're seeing the downside that these public discussions have over private ones (not that I would have it any other way) - bad PR. Perhaps Eugenia would prefer that we start sending users boiler-plate "your feedback is always apperciated" instead of being honest.

Sometimes users have good ideas, sometimes they don't. Regardless, probably the feedback recieved from users while helping deal with an issue or helping then understand how a feature works is more helpful then what explicit 'great idea' an user has.

Ok so its insulting to pay certain developers to implement features that users desire, rather than donating to a project in whole. Users still want certain features, but developers are volunteering, or being subsidized by a large company and don't have time to implement these features, so what users want isn't of the developers concern. So how does a user go about remedying this situation? The only thing I can think of, is to pay a private programmer. They would implement this feature(s) and hopefully the project will include it in there releases, or someone else will like it and continue to update it.
So I guess what we really need is a hacker 411.

--Ashley

Linux needs to embrace the mass consumer if they ever expect to knock Windows off.

Why do you think that "knocking Windows off" is Linux's goal?
(Presuming there is a single thing that can be called "Linux").

I believe that the developers are doing it in order to create something better, not in order to push anyone else out of the market. (Except those, who do it for their salary, of course).

I think that this false belief, that the goal of Linux is to knock off Windows, makes people think that the developers should implement every feature request and all the other strange things that were popping up in this thread.

However, you can't reach a correct conclusion, when you start out from incorrect assumptions.

I haven't watched the video yet admittedly (limited connection), but from the descriptions like "usability lab-generated data", it doesn't quite sound like user feedback to me...
I note that doesn't seem like somewhere official I can give feedback (unless MS devs read that forum and listen) - just one of their devs claiming that they do listen, which comes under my heading of PR.
As AdamW said, where's the Bugzilla?

at least we have the right to suggest, dont we?
Sure you have. If you know the difference between a suggestion and a demand .

unlike os x or windows...
Oh, OS X and Windows user don't have the right to suggest what the want in their OS? I thought that Apple and Microsoft cared about their customers. Silly me. [/irony]

I'll convert to Windows and let it blow up in my face. That should kill me.

Microsoft took a poll and found that all viruses would disappear once all people learned to get along, but that this would require a microchip implant in your brain and for the user to be hooked up with an electric magnetic pulse generator.

Nothing is stopping people from making a monetary donation in exchange for a feature for any FOSS project. Simply open your phone book, look for the nearest commercial programmer, and ask him/her what it'll cost for them to write your feature and release under an FOSS license.

Oh, that's too expensive for you right? You were thinking a donation of maybe $100 would be enough? Idiot!

And herein lies the reason bounty systems are not fantastic. Sure, a bunch of people could donate to certain features, and maybe this could work, although I find it doubtful. Either way, nothing is stopping someone from setting up such a site to allow for this kind of aproach. Eugenia?

I'm sure that such a site with bounty's of large sums would be favorable to developers. The thing is that it's insulting to a developer to be asked to hack on something for almost nothing. It is wonderful for them to donate their time doing some work they enjoy, but it's an utter insult to them to be offered $50 for their work, which would cost monuments more in the commercial world.

I think you'll find most developers do listen to users to some degree, but no-one will go out of their way working on code they don't want to without some form of incentive. I think the negative PR resulting from the initial post has driven developers to respond in an extreme manner out of sheer insult, and I don't blame them one bit.

So isn't the proposal essentially:
* to only pay or coerce developers for features they don't want to do (or have no interest in)?
* but not to pay them for the core programs and everything else they have contributed over many years?? 99.9% of Linux?

This is getting annoying.
I still think Eugenia is on to something, namely how to enable users and developers of big OS projects to interact in a meaningful, that is beneficial to the project, way.

Just reread the discussion on the Gnome mailing list where several people pointed out that this list, that was meant as a way for developers to interact, had become nearly useless as it was swamped by Gnome users, Gnome enthusiasts. I think this shows that the problem of user - developer interaction is a very real one and discussing how to implement better ways for this interaction to happen is a worthwhile effort.

However, what is really annoying and disgusting is the way this discussion has been portraied by Eugenia in her articles on the subject. Reading the actual discussions on the mailing list one will find a lot of well thought out responses by the developers. Now you may of course agree with these responses, or disagree, but simply ignoring them and taking answers of some devs out of context, misinterpreting them and in the process totally misrepresenting what has actually been discussed certainly doesn't help, to say the least.

"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."

MERCEDES BENZ will be able to sustain itself just fine without ENGINEERS. So when it comes to choosing between scaring away ENGINEERS and scaring away CUSTOMERS, the choice is rather easy actually.

A BREAD SHOP will be able to sustain itself just fine without CUSTOMERS, while it will not last a single day without BAKERS. So when it comes to choosing between scaring away BAKERS and scaring away CUSTOMER, the choice is rather easy actually."

How right you are, mate! Tell me, who pays your bills?

Eugenia, if you would read all posts in that thread, there are many good points why "lets gather 100$ and they _have_ to implement it" is wrong.
Like Aaron wrote:
"if people don't like how the existing development is going, i don't see how their $20 is going to change that."
And KDE developers, to my experience, don't ignore whishlists/bugreports - thus we _have_ feedback already, but in the end _developers_ must decide what will be implemented - if you are not one, you can't possibly understand what design changes some feature might require (unless, suddenly, we are happy with dirty hacks).

I gotta I agree with you. There probably are problems between users and devs, but I think things are being blown out of proportion. On most opensource projects devs tend to listen to users, but its impossible to implement all the requested features or it may need a massive overhaul of the whole project.

What these two posts do (one from Eugenia and this one) is portray opensource projects as loosely run by a band of devs who don't care about the users, but lets not forget that without users, the projects would be dead anyway. After reading some of the posts by the devs, I am sure that some of them were taken in the wrong context to make a good story on this site.

In a bakery, the bakers are getting paid to make bread per hour. In a car manufacturer the engineers are being paid for their efforts per hour. In the FOSS world this is clearly quite different.

One proposed solution so far has been bounty's. Do you believe that a bounty system would provide enough money to pay these programmers at an hourly rate to implement your feature? I don't.

I don't think anyone has anything to complain about given that these developers are contributing their time to these projects. I can't see many of the people complaining here going to work everyday for nothing, yet they seem to have that expectation for the FOSS developers.

If no-one buys the bread at a bakery, the bakery goes broke, and stops producing bread. Given that a FOSS coder is likely deriving payment from an outside means (a real job, as FOSS is a hobby on the side?) there isn't the same certainty that his code contributions will cease if consumers don't use the end-product, as he/she was doing it for fun anyway.

"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."

MERCEDES BENZ will be able to sustain itself just fine without ENGINEERS. So when it comes to choosing between scaring away ENGINEERS and scaring away CUSTOMERS, the choice is rather easy actually.

A BREAD SHOP will be able to sustain itself just fine without CUSTOMERS, while it will not last a single day without BAKERS. So when it comes to choosing between scaring away BAKERS and scaring away CUSTOMER, the choice is rather easy actually."

How right you are, mate! Tell me, who pays your bills?

"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."

I really disagree with this. A developer becomes a developer because he has used a piece of OSS and likes what he sees and wants to contribute.

If you have no users you will find your developers will leave too. If you have users you will always have a steady flow of contributors.

This kind of arrogance sickens me, but unforuntately is typical of most OSS projects.

I have honestly had it with this site. I've been coming here for years (even clicked on a few advertisers links before), but now I'm not coming back.

My reasons: well, who really cares. If I explained, I'm sure they would get modded down. Let's just say the running of this site is less than professional. Feel free to mod this down if you wish. It's what I expect.

Obviously the developers are either making decent decisions on their own, or listening to users to some degree, because their software seems to sport a significant number of users as is, so I think your claim of arrogance is blown out of proportion.

I think you'll find that when things are being done for free (in FOSS, charity's, and small clubs/organisations) these same choices need to be made. The people contributing for free won't be willing to bend over backwards like some customers might expect. They are, afterall, not getting paid.

People should respect the work that they do for nothing, and instead of expecting, and demanding (which only angers these people, as they are doing it for others benefit afterall, and like to see these people being thankful, instead of demanding) actually step in and do something themselves to help!

I really disagree with this. A developer becomes a developer because he has used a piece of OSS and likes what he sees and wants to contribute.

If you have no users you will find your developers will leave too. If you have users you will always have a steady flow of contributors.

This kind of arrogance sickens me, but unforuntately is typical of most OSS projects.

OT: I have a feature request for this site to include a better quoting system. I am not willing to pay for it (or at least not enough to cover the costs of your time to implement it) but none-the-less as a user I have an expectation that the quoting system will be improved.

Of course, others might disagree with me, citing that b, and i are more than sufficient when combined with the copy/paste of any modern platform, but their opinion is wrong.

I understand, however, that the developer of the site might not feel like enhancing the current system of quotation. He or she is probably not receiving the sort of money that would make things like this worthwhile, but he or she may decide to do it for the benefit of their own site anyway.

Certainly, if I were the site author, I'd be insulted if someone demanded that such a feature be implemented with only the offer of a years subscription to the site. Such a subscription would not come even close to covering the time taken. If I were the author, I'd much prefer a slab of beer, than $50, as I'd be earning much more than $50 doing this work commercially.

I don't think Suse is developing S/W for fun only. Heck, without USERS they'd be broke. And without USER INPUT they can't SELL. And without SALES developers can't feed their families.

For haven's sakes do you really believe NOVELL bought Suse because they have the best dvelopers writing S/W for fun and for free? C'mon, ask Waldo how much Suse pays him for his work.

Believe it or not, USERS are more important than DEVELOPERS.Without user feedback a dev can NOT develope selleble apps.

"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."

What's so damn provocing about this statement. I think he is totally right. You can discuss the semantics in this, whether is just about KDE sustaining itself or is it about software living without user, you can also discuss who is a user an who a developer and so on, but to me taste from its literal meaning the statement is true.
The problem is that many "open-source devs and users" tend to get ideological about the whole thing. It's all about taking over the world without paying money but with getting all the love and attention from the devs the user needs in advance for being part in this kind of revolution . Jippie, it's just software and we're not at war.
On the other hand many oss devs tend to think the coder is the only one, and the only one who knows the truth about developing good software, to him/her it seems to be all about implementing, not desinging, planning, testing or maintaining. And that's fine, implementing is the most fun part for a lot of people and if they choose to make their code opensource and publically available they don't have to give a damn about what some kid wants or doesn't want in this code. They can give a damn, but they don't have to. Why should they? Just to please some geeks who think they are at war against the ones above and their way of fighting is using oss and downloading stuff over p2p-networks.
But nevertheless a lot of once free oss devs are now getting paid by big companies for just doing the work they did in their sparetime before their being employed. The thing is, why are companies spending money to such projects. I think it's for big amount about creating an image. Like "hey, lot of people use this, so let's be cool and employ the developer and then let's see what we can do to earn money with this. So maybe it's true, that if oss developers get paid that they just have to listen to what paying customers are saying and wanting, but screwing away potantially paying customers is also the best way for the paid oss-dev to get unemployed.
just my 2 cents

Then why don't you complain to Suse or Novell instead ?