Re: The <whatever> developer syndrome

At 2:08 +0000 10/9/03, Steve Hutton wrote about Re: The <whatever> 
developer syndrome:

|In any case I don't think it's worth getting worked up over how
|developers may or may not respond to feedback.  Individual feedback
|to Open Source projects still has a much better chance of having
|an effect than it does with commercial closed source products.  And
|if that's not good enough, hey, you have the code.  Seriously.

Sorry Steve, I don't agree with you on this one. I own lots of 
commercial and shareware software and I have never ever been called 
names, insulted or humiliated by the their customer service, helpdesk 
or developers feedback. Whenever I mail them a question or suggestion 
I always receive a email back with a polite answer like 'thanks for 
your suggestion we will/will not consider it for our next release'. 
or at least a message the will look into the problem.

It's my experience that in the Open Source world as a user you seem 
to be fair game and inuslt/being rude/humiliate users is accepted 
behavior. When I complain about answers or comments I received 
shoulders a shrugged or people smirk because they think it's funny.

I personally like Open Source products, I'm not to keen on the 
atmosphere and attitude that surrounds the Open Source communities 
and I'm not talking about just KDE here but it's a general Open 
Source attitude. I've spend 5 years dealing with it and trying to 
improve it but it's something that is difficult to change. Social 
skills are needed when dealing with users/clients and somehow 
exercising those social skills is not very popular in Open Source.

It's not that those social skills do not exist but somehow it's 
accepted behavior to act like that. Those people wouldn't dream of 
addressing their mom or girlfriend/wife/partner like that but for 
faceless users it's okay.
True, some users send rubbish and rude requests and emails as well, 
but I think that's were the delete key on your keybord is invented 
for.

As for fixing bugs, isn't the developer who developed a piece of 
software responsible for his/her own code? It probably is not much 
fun, cleaning up the stuff you made just like when you were a child 
and your mom made you pick your lego after you played with it. At 
least with my mom, don't feel like it and it's no fun didn't sit well.

--
Tink
France


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