Old projects and the free-software community [LWN.net]

Old projects and the free-software community

Posted May 19, 2016 7:52 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183)
Parent article: Old projects and the free-software community

Users of projects generally become aware that there is still something to do as soon as they run into a bug or problem. The usual solution of making it as easy as possible for people to get in and contribute, combined with a culture of encouraging people to try to fix bugs themselves might help a bit.

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Old projects and the free-software community

Posted May 19, 2016 10:18 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

But do we really want to keep open-source world in it's ghetto where plumbing tools are all open-sourced yet "real apps" which 99% of users actually use are proprietary?

This is natural consequence of this approach. I mean: most applications out there are used by people who don't know how to fix bugs. Yet there are huge amount of developers who are looking for the problems which they could solve (for fun or otherwise) but they would never hit problems with these applications because, well, they don't use them.

If we want open-source to become a tool of choice (we do want that, right?) then we need to find a way to somehow attract people who don't scratch just their own itch…

Old projects and the free-software community

Posted May 21, 2016 21:21 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

Most core contributors to projects already do far more than scratch their own itch - it is only occasional contributors which are mostly of that scratching variety. This isn't the issue. I think it is mostly a matter of resources and speed and efficiency - not enough ppl work on the apps or they don't collaborate. Open source projects with a company behind them often manage to get the resources (discourse, ownCloud) even though not always and that model has issues, too.

Old projects and the free-software community

Posted May 22, 2016 9:56 UTC (Sun) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

This is a problem which is still to be solved (quite relevant to me as a VirtualBox developer, as you will understand if you browse our bug tracker!) Possible solutions I see: helping non-coding users to investigate bugs enough that the one percent of coders also affected have an easier time; encouraging non-coders to find good work-arounds (they often do this without encouragement); offering individual support contracts which offer voting rights without guarantees of bug fixes - it requires a bit of trust on the side of the users, which the developing team would need to build up.