Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging users: initial results of the survey

On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 11:33:43 -0700
Ken Springer <snowshed1@q.com> wrote:

> What I didn't like was being told my issues were not important.  BS! 
> It's important to me.
If it's important to you, you can fund a developer to work on it for
you, or work on it yourself. If not, then unfortunately the developer is
doing this for his own reasons, and gets to choose what he wants to
work on. Obviously it makes sense for developers to listen to the users
and work on what the majority of users think is important, but a) they
are not actually obligated to do so, and b) don't assume your issues are
everybody's issues.

> Let's say you have a car, and every 4th time you go to use it, it
> won't start.  You take it to your mechanic, and each time you do, he
> tells you "it's not important, he's got bigger problems to solve".
> Are you going to continue to take it to that mechanic, or are you
> going to find a different mechanic?
What if the mechanic has too much work just dealing with peoples cars
that won't start at all? Should he drop all that and deal with your
issue? Why?

This depends on the severity of the issues you are bringing up, and as
I don't know the issues you have raised, I cannot speak to that, I'm
just pointing out that so far you are not making a strong case for why
your issues were important, only that you don't like being told your
issues are not pressing. Nobody likes that, but sometimes it's true.

> Regardless of product, if the vendor/supplier/developer tells you
> that your issue is not important, will you use that product in the
> future?
I would just like to point out here that people love to complain about
open source not solving their pet issues promptly, but few of them have
actually tried to get issues solved in commercial products. I have. And
just because I paid for the software is absolutely *no* guarantee that
my issue will be attended to. Commercial software is just as likely to
tell you your issues are not important. It depends on the product, for
sure, but this is not always about open source vs. commercial, or even
necessarily about any particular product. More often than not it is
users thinking that because it is open source, and they actually have
access to the developers to post bugs to, that this means their bugs
automatically must get attended to, and if the developers respond with
"Sorry, we're too busy working on things lots of users want. Your
issues just aren't important right now" then they are being personally
insulted. They assume that for all commercial software any issue they
post will immediately get seen to, and because open source doesn't work
that way, it is not good enough. Unfortunately this just isn't true of
commercial software.

Not saying you are saying this, I just wanted to point this out because
I see it a lot, and your email didn't actually say that this wasn't the
case for you.

Paul



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