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

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:30:23 -0700
Ken Springer <snowshed1@q.com> wrote:

> > > Then...  You don't want them as a customer/user, nothing more than
> > > that.  Now, if you were building your own business, is that
> > > something you want to be doing, driving customers away?
Actually, if you are building your own business, and are a smart
business person, you *really* do want to drive away the type of
customer who expects you to bend over backwards for him all the time.
If you do it the first time, he will just be back, over and over again,
expecting you to bend over backwards for him every time. The quicker
you show him that there are certain things you will and won't do, the
quicker you can either have him as a respectful client with whom you
have a good business relationship, or the quicker he goes away and you
can concentrate on your other cutomers with whom you do have a good
business relationship.

> No, if you ran a Mexican restaurant, you forgot to include the
> tortilla when you made the burrito.  Fix the burrito.
>
> Or, I ordered a burrito, you gave me an uncooked fajita.
>
> It's not about changing the menu, it's fixing the offerings on the
> menu.
Actually, it seems to be about you being upset that the bugs you
reported haven't been fixed. Meanwhile lots of other people are quite
happy with the many, many bugs that have been fixed, and the many, many
requested features that have been added. The analogies are breaking
down here, people.

> > I've been around a couple of FOSS projects in my time.  Threatening
> > to leave because one or two issues which don't break the program
> > won't fly with them either.  In fact, I don't know of many paid
> > software companies that will do that unless you're the one paying
> > for the custom made software.
Pretty true. If you are paying for custom written software you get to
dictate what gets fixed in what order. Otherwise, FOSS software and
commercial alike, it's all at the whims of the developers. LO is no
different to any other software in that regard. And it happens to be
working pretty well, from what I can see.

This whole discussion seems to be about the fact that a couple of
people disagree with the priorities of the developers when it comes to
fixing bugs. They have a couple of bugs that haven't been fixed in a
couple of years, and are crying foul. Meanwhile, most of the people are
happy with the pace and focus of the bug system in LO.

Unfortunately, those couple of people have latched on to the idea that
the LO developers do what they like only, which I am sure is completely
false. Probably my fault, as I made a comment about not being able to
*force* them to do something, and now everybody is up in arms about
them *only* doing what they like, trying to argue that we should force
them to work on specific bugs (their chosen bugs, of course), and how
they have a silly mindset that is alienating users. Of course this is
not true, and I never meant to imply it (and didn't really, people just
misunderstood what I actually did say). I would say the majority of
people are perfectly happy with the priorities of the developers and it
is only a few edge cases that are left (for one reason or another) to
linger for a long time. I do think if any developers are reading this,
they should take notice and maybe re-look at their bug prioritisation
system, I think there can be some improvements, but I *don't* think the
system is totally wrong, and that the developers are arrogant sods who
don't care about the users, and just do whatever they think will be
most fun, as it seems some are suggesting.

Bear in mind that all car and Mexican restaurant analogies aside, we're
really talking about the developers leaving a handful of bugs unfixed
for a couple of years. That's all.

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