Linked by Bob "number9" Minvielle on Fri 13th Jun 2003 18:51 UTC
Having written open source software myself, and being a subscriber to mailing lists, etc, there is a realization that the number one thing missing from smaller open source projects is feedback from users.
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I agree with others who say that if you are an OSS programmer and desire feedback, build a mechanism into the program that would allow a user to do give it to you.
hehe
For example, in the Help menu, add an option that says "Provide Feedback" and when the user clicks that option, it would take them to a web form (or whatever).
If more programmers started doing that, I would probably offer more feedback
In Firebird, whenever it blocks a popup, it will place an icon in the status bar. I woudl love for this icon to display the actual popups it blocked when double clicked. To me, that is valid feedback I would like to give, but I have no idea where to send it. Sure, they probably got forums or a newsgroup or mailing list (or whatever), but remember .. users are lazy and usually won't make that much effort to go and find the 'feedback forum', and that especially goes for me too
And do keep this in mind also - if you ask for feedback, be mentally prepared for the feedback you're going to get, be it positive or negative. If your program is slow, buggy, and sucks shit, I'm going to let you know about it
PS - To Zeb: Thanks for the link to Linux alterantives for Windows apps. Even though I think they are a little overzealous with their recommendations (Ogle as a replacement for PowerDVD? No way in hell.), there's still a lot of good info in there!