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Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 releasedFirefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 releasedPosted Dec 17, 2008 18:52 UTC (Wed) by bucky (guest, #53055)In reply to: Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 released by rahulsundaram Parent article: Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 released
Uh, if I don't like a particular brand of peanut butter, I do not write to the CEO of the company and complain. I simply use a different brand of peanut butter.
In general, one does NOT constantly whine and complain to manufacturers about their products. It is NOT my responsibility to make Skippy better as long as Jif is available (for example).
This guy is disappointed that his preferred brand of peanut butter is being discontinued. He has a right to his feelings. He does NOT have a responsibility to participate in the manufacture of his favorite brand of peanut butter every second of his waking life.
Indeed, I can't seem to find Jif available in decent size containers very much anymore (except for the icky crunchy one, for some reason). I may indeed switch to Skippy Natural. Whether I change or not, I won't be writing to anybody about it, and I frankly resent the implication that I should.
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Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 released Posted Dec 17, 2008 19:47 UTC (Wed) by vomlehn (subscriber, #45588) [Link]
So, you don't write to the CEO and complain, but you're willing take up my time by complaining in a forum that may go completely unread by anyone with the power to make a change. How do you think your problem will ever be addressed if you don't communicate it to the people who can fix it?
Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 released Posted Dec 17, 2008 20:17 UTC (Wed) by bucky (guest, #53055) [Link]
I wasn't really responding to the guy complaining about Firefox 2 reaching end of life.
If an end user explains to you--ANYWHERE--what he doesn't like about your product, that information is valuable. It's valuable even if he's saying something you don't want to hear. It's valuable ESPECIALLY if it's something you don't want to hear. It's valuable even if it would have been more useful in another place or at another time.
I see this kind of conversation all the time:
User: "I use product X, because product Y sucked/crashed/has fewer features/didn't suit me."
Developer: "Did you file a bug report?"
If the user offers his opinion at all, you have the freedom to take it or leave it, but (1) it's his opinion and he's entitled to it, and (2) whether he's filed a bug report or not has no bearing on whether his comment is apt or not.
This is a very difficult truth, but it's the truth nonetheless: It isn't the user's responsibility to explain to the developer why his product sucks. If he offers his opinion at all, it's a GIFT and should be treated as such.
Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 released Posted Dec 17, 2008 20:37 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I wasn't passing any judgment about the aptness of his comment. From the description, it wasn't clear what he was talking about. Maybe he has filed a bug report. I was merely asking for a reference. Nothing wrong with it. Btw, I am not a developer of Firefox an your analogy seems to not fit at all to me.
Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 released Posted Dec 17, 2008 20:39 UTC (Wed) by PO8 (guest, #41661) [Link]
At the risk of feeding a troll...
We don't write to retail consumer goods manufacturers because in general there is very little chance that they will respond in any useful way. Since these goods tend to be highly interchangeable, brand switching is a reasonable alternative strategy. We do write bug reports for open source software packages because in general they have a history of fixing reported bugs. Since these packages tend to be minimally interchangeable, brand switching is not a reasonable alternative strategy.
Open source software is different enough from retail consumer goods to make most analogies between the two useless.
Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 released Posted Dec 17, 2008 23:32 UTC (Wed) by massysett (guest, #52736) [Link]
"We do write bug reports for open source software packages because in general they have a history of fixing reported bugs. Since these packages tend to be minimally interchangeable, brand switching is not a reasonable alternative strategy."
If this were true, there would not be so many examples of products that were forked because users and developers were not satisfied with the rate of development of a particular product. EGCS and XEmacs immediately spring to mind, and one could even put Firefox in this category. I can also think of projects that were started not as forks but solely because the author was thoroughly disgusted with an existing product--for example, the author of Getmail discusses many bugs that were not fixed in Fetchmail for years.
Furthermore, there often is interchangeability. There are lots of Vi clones (and different editors altogether), multiple desktop environments, different Web browsers, multiple music players.
I recently had a problem with a music player. I thought of bugreporting it, so I looked at the bug database. There were multiple bugs similar to the one I had reported. Many had never been dealt with; others were marked invalid. This is for a product that is not a hallmark of stability in the first place. I did not bugreport it. That would have been a waste of time. Instead I found another solution. My solution is not entirely comparable--I use multiple products where before I used just one--but it works just fine and is much more stable.
Obviously every project is different. But the comparisons to commercial products are entirely valid. Why should I continue using a product that has problems that are (at least for me) crippling, when I can go use another product that has fewer problems? I'm supposed to reward the sloppy project with bug reports, instead of using the project that has taken the time to code carefully so that there aren't so many bugs in the first place?
Free software bug reporting Posted Dec 21, 2008 22:51 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] We are talking about a Free software project here. Most probably you have not payed a dime to them but still you are using the product of their work. It is hard to see the analogy with commercial products that actively seek your money, when all you do is use their software for free.There are a lot of brands for peanut butter. There are also a lot of music players out there. But there are not so many alternatives for Firefox that we can discard it just for one (annoying but) little bug. Helping them with bug reporting -- or even better bug fixes -- is in the end helping us all.
Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 released Posted Dec 17, 2008 21:54 UTC (Wed) by TxtEdMacs (subscriber, #5983) [Link]
RE: If he [the user] offers his opinion at all, it's a GIFT and should be treated as such.
I am struck by my ignorance, in the case of Firefox, I thought the gift was a useful application. Indeed, I regretted I could not help out on the beta stage with the most recent version as I tried with 1.5 and 2.0.
Now I am enlightened to learn I had it all wrong. I need not be neither appreciative nor feel any responsibility for the gift ... oops, why do I keep getting it so wrong. I guess I will have to learn with practice I owe nothing to anyone but am entitled to take freely. Sounds like the small government people.
Thanks for the wisdom.
Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 released Posted Dec 19, 2008 23:27 UTC (Fri) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]
> It isn't the user's responsibility to explain to the developer why his
product sucks. If he offers his opinion at all, it's a GIFT and should be treated as such.
It depends on the form of the gift and the situation. To offer another
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