Re: Users and the development process

Hi Florian,

> I mean
> responsibility for the program, not necessary for the user.

I draw your attention to section 11 of the GNU GPL. Please excuse the 
capital letters; I'm not shouting, that's how it's written :-)

NO WARRANTY

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY 
FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN 
OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES 
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER 
EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED 
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE 
ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH 
YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL 
NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

> Did I get something wrong about openusability.org? To me, this is a
> community trying to make Free Software more usable. Is there a company
> behind it?

Not necessarily behind this particular website, but see also:

http://www.betterdesktop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main

which is funded by Novell.

 > Is this community based on the thought to sell something?

I don't think that's the primary motivation for free software developers 
in general, but it certainly is for Novell.

> ! "As long as you do not program or pay, you are not in the position to
> make suggestions."

That's not what I said, I meant that you are not in a position to make 
*demands* on people's free time and goodwill. There's a big difference 
between "In my mastering work I have found RMS meters very useful" and 
"You don't have RMS meters, your software isn't 'professional', it's 
like sooo lame."

> So, to get you right. It is not enough to offer money; one has to fund
> commercial developer time just as an ordinary job.

I think we have to be careful when funding free software projects, it 
can be very divisive (for example if some developers earn money from the 
project, but others don't.) It's the same for any project which depends 
on volunteers. Besides, doing it for money is different from doing it 
for love/respect/kudos.

What I was saying is that if you are going to fund new features, you 
have to be realistic about how much time that work would take, and what 
that time is worth in the labour market. That cost may easily be beyond 
the means of individual users, in which case they have to find a way to 
pool their resources.

Let's not forget that proprietary software users spend many thousands of 
dollars/pounds/euro just to keep up to date. I don't see why free 
software users shouldn't fund development to the same degree - you could 
argue they should be funding more, since they get all the additional 
benefits that free software brings.

Cheers!

Daniel



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