Old projects and the free-software community

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.