Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 13:41:55 -0600 (MDT) From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com> To: "Jeffrey D. Wheelhouse" <jdw@wwwi.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Users vs. developers (was Re: IP bugs in FreeBSD 2.1.5 ) Message-ID: <199610161941.NAA13142@rocky.mt.sri.com> In-Reply-To: <199610161850.LAA05089@wwwi.com> References: <199610161850.LAA05089@wwwi.com>
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My last diatribe on this topic: > > "CONTRIBUTE, PAY or SHUT UP! (in order of my preference)" > Then you shouldn't call it FreeBSD, because it isn't. You should > call it "MembersOnlyBSD." Why? As you stated already, you are willing to stake your business and reputation on FreeBSD now, and you didn't pay anything to get it. However, what Poul is saying is that IFF you want don't like the ways things are currently being done, then the above ideas are your options. Provide a better solution, pay someone to build a better solution, or live with the current system. > I was under the mistaken impression that the core team might be > starting to forget that there are users out there. You have made > it clear that in fact it is because you are pretending you don't > have users. Not speaking for the core team (I can't, I'm no longer a core member :), but I think this is where you and I disagree. We have users, but making the users feel 'happy and secure' is a secondary goal to making *me* feel 'sane and content'. Too often the primary goal conflicts with the secondary goal, so the developers chooses the former over the latter to the obvious displeasure of the user who feels slighted. The slight is often un-intentional (though occasionally venting anger makes the developer keep his/her sanity), but it does bring out the difficulty we have in juggling our lives and our hobby. The solution from a developer perspective: The more 'developers' there are the less work for each developer. It also means that each developer has to do less and less 'grunt' work and more fun work, which means that everyone wins. Where to get developers? The users of course. Who better understands the problems of FreeBSD. The developers are already well aware of most of the problems in the systems, they simply don't have the time/desire/ability to fix all of them. So, asking you to provide solutions to your problems isn't an attempt to belittle you, it's a cry for help. You say you have no time, and are too busy with Real Work(tm)? Do you think *ANY* of the developers have gobs of free time? *laugh* It's all a matter of priorities. If the 'fix' is an important to you as you make it out to be, then the fix should be equally as important. It's alot easier for a user to say 'Hey you, go fix the bug and make my life easier' than it is to go fix the bug yourself, but that means less sleep for the developer? Is that fair to expect that or even continually ask that of the developers? Finally, the statements of the kind: "You obviously don't care about the users" are pure bunk, and only serve to anger the ddevelopers. All of the developers have sacrified thousands of hours of their time for FreeBSD, most with little or no compensation. We could 'hoard' it to ourselves if we truly didn't care about the users, but instead we found a great sponsor who gives us free hardware to do the development on, free bandwidth to distribute the bits, and even pays a couple folks to make the product better, all to the benefit of the users. Some of the developers don't need a 'cool sysinstall' program. They could install the software using magnets and no keyboard (I'm not one of them). *grin* As users, you need to put yourselves in the shoes of the developers. I can only speak for myself in that I try to put myself in the shoes of the user. My offer to do the work for 2.1.5 was genuine, but to be honest I made it knowing full well that no-one will take me up on it. IMHO, the users too often 'expect' more out of the developers than they would ever expect of themselves. Nate
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