[Mageia-discuss] Mageia Forums

Tux99 tux99-mga at uridium.org
Wed Sep 22 04:32:11 CEST 2010


On Tue, 21 Sep 2010, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:

> 2010/9/21 Tux99 <tux99-mga at uridium.org>:
> > On Tue, 21 Sep 2010, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
> >
> > I can perfectly understand the reasons why that's the case when the
> > developers are full-time employees and do the work as a job, but this
> > shouldn't and mustn't be the case in a non-profit community project
> > where everyone is in it for the fun.
> >
> > In this scenario devs are normally users themselves too, and even for
> > their own satisfaction it should be natural that they at least
> > occasionally check user reactions to what they develop, by spending some
> > time on forums (at least reading through them).
> 
> That's a very idealistic point of view and I'd really like to read a
> developper's opinion on that. Because IIRC it was really a free
> developper who told me that developpers do not need users because they
> are developping for their own needs in the first place (I reasoned
> that users and developpers are needing each other as 2 parts in a
> shared system). And it was another who told me that he'd rather spend
> his time working on a problem than reading all that user stuff in the
> forums. No employees!
> 
> But I wish you were right.

I realise that what i described might not be the case in every FOSS 
project or not in even in the majority, but it isn't just wishful 
thinking, I know it is reality in some projects (even large projects).

For example in the XBMC project (which is very large too), several
devs partecipate occasionally in end-user threads on the XBMC forum and 
the interaction works very well as the devs are marked as such on the 
forum so the interaction is normally very respectful.
This benefits boths sides as the devs stay in touch with what the users 
think about new features or issues and the users benefit from an insight 
into the thinking that lead to specific design choices.

I think the reason this works well on the XBMC project is because the 
devs themselves use a section of the forum to communicate among 
themselves (rather than a ML) and therefore since they are on the forum 
anyway, it's not a big effort for them to have a look at the active 
end-user threads, too.

While I'm in no position to influence this, I believe that Mageia 
and it's community would greatly benefit if the Mageia devs would use a 
reserved section of the Mageia forum (a subforum where only devs can 
post) for cooker discussions rather than a mailing-list, since it would 
bring devs and users closer to each other and facilitate interaction.



More information about the Mageia-discuss mailing list