Yes, We Need Users Too!

by Joe Brockmeier - Jul. 01, 2008Comments (13)

I’m a bit taken aback by this post by Jason Harris over on the KDE Developer’s Journals site. Harris says that ” KDE, like many other open-source projects, doesn’t really need users at all, whether they are poisonous or not.”

Now, a qualifier — Harris' post is provoked by a discussion of “poisonous” users, i.e., those select few users who turn up and (intentionally or not) do “contribute” to the project in the form of dissonance and conflict, but the idea that open source doesn’t need users is one that should be strongly refuted.I think virtually everyone agrees that projects would be better off without the trolls, griefers, and assorted characters whose presence adds up to a drag on the project rather than just a passive consumer of code or fan of the project.

I get the gist of Harris argument — KDE (or any other project) can deliver code without any users. So, from a purely functional standpoint, I guess that’s true. To exist, KDE doesn’t need anyone who just uses the code without making contributions. But what’s the point?

An open source project without users is like a band without an audience, a restaurant with no customers, or a writer with no readers. What’s the point in creating something useful, if no one uses it? Why go to the trouble in the first place, if you’re not looking to make something that will be used, and used widely?

Yes, we hope that many users will become contributors — but 1) our acceptance of users should not be predicated on the idea that we’re just waiting for them to “level up” to contributor status, and 2) if every user of KDE or openSUSE decided to become a contributor tomorrow, would we really be able to handle the input?

Finally, I think most developers work on projects like KDE because they care about free and open source software. If you’re a FOSS supporter, then I’d suggest that it’s important to gather as many users as possible in order to convince them of the merits of FOSS.

From where I’m sitting, the attitude that “my FOSS project doesn’t need users” is a strong argument for users to support proprietary software instead.Proprietary vendors have an economic incentive to cater to users — even if some proprietary vendors have not done so particularly well — and if the FOSS attitude is “we don’t need you,” we will most certainly alienate the bulk of users.

I’ve long argued to my friends, family, co-workers, and audiences full of strangers that they should consider Linux and FOSS not only because the software is high-quality, but because the licensing and community care for users in a way that proprietary software does not. Note that the GNU Project’s Free Software Definition specifically calls out users and not just developers. I’m disappointed to think that some of those people would be greeted with “we don’t need you,” if they don’t qualify as a contributor or prospective contributor.

If nothing else, users help spread the seeds of open source to other potential contributors. The passive user of open source might not ever lift a finger in support of KDE or openSUSE or any other project, but they can be instrumental in passing on the ideas and advocating projects just by using them. By ignoring those users, we lose.

[Hat tip to Matt Asay for the link to Harris' post.]

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier works for Novell as the openSUSE Community Manager.


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13 Comments
 

Lisa, I couldn't agree more.

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I think this sums things up nicely (lyrics by Peart):

Know your place in life Is where you want to be Don't let them tell you that You owe it all to me Keep on looking forward No use in looking round Hold your head above the crowd And they won't bring you down

Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind We marvel after those who sought New wonders in the world, wonders in the world, Wonders in the world they wrought.

Live for yourself, there's no one else More worth living for Begging hands and bleeding hearts Will only cry out for more

Well, I know they've always Told you selfishness was wrong Yet it was for me not you I came to write this song

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I wonder, idly, if you or Matt will post something about the people who wrote in blogs syndicated on planetkde.org that supported the idea of value-in-users?

Or if you might pick up some of the relevant comments made, such as in Sebastian Trug's blog on the matter.

To disagree is a fine thing. To agree is sublime. And if we all stand around disagreeing ...... well, that kind of sucks. ;)

Maybe we could include links to people we *agree* with as well, so that instead of picking at each other we're supporting the memes we agree with. Much more positive (and with it a more positive community with energy) while achieving pretty much the same thing.

Just a thought.

Next comment coming up is actually about the topic here ;)

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Ok, now for an *on-topic* comment, rather than a meta-comment ;)

This issue comes to a head when one is asked to pick between a specific user or group of users and a contributor or a group of contributors.

If there's never a choice between users and contributors .. hey, bring on the users!

But when there is an imbalance going on and one must either capitulate to the user or to the contributor ... what does one do?

Well, hopefully the answer is "find something that works for both."

Let's assume that covers most of the remaining situations. (Assuming some good management and most people being reasonable)

What about the events that still aren't covered? Sadly, those events do happen and they are ultimately the most destructive.

In that case, one might look at it this way: contributors create the overwhelming bulk of the value, the user takes advantage of that value (a morally neutral act). In the act of consumption, users provide value in the form of market demand, etc, but none of that is useful without the initial acts of creation brought on by the contributors.

The cost/benefit equation pretty much solves itself from there, and so when one must choose between a particular user and a particular contributor .... jetison the user.

In business, of course, this is referred to as "firing the customer" =)

So then it becomes quite apparent that the actual question here is: "how does one identify when to fire the customer?"

There's lots of commentary on that in the business world, so I won't bother cluttering things up here. But one does need to make sure it isn't the contributor causing problems endlessly, or that the particular user isn't actually speaking sense in that case, etc.. it's not quite as cut and dry as I make it out above, but it's usually pretty close to that cut and dry.

In any case, it is imperative that F/OSS projects be allowed to fire the customer when necessary and not be scolded or otherwise castigated for it.

Imagine telling a business: "no matter what, you must do business with every customer that comes along. no exceptions!" It's a ludicrous statement, even if the motto "the customer is always right" is generally agreed upon.

Community management types could probably help educate the F/OSS community about these things to avoid problems as things continue to grow (which is the #1 source of these issues IME, in F/OSS or elsewhere).

For example: when and how does one fire the customer?

(This is equally true of contributors, btw, who are a special sort of customer in the F/OSS system.)

KDE's innability to "fire" certain customers (a rather small handful of individuals) has cost them my further public involvement in the project. I am not the only one they've lost in this manner, and KDE isn't the only hig profile project to experience this phenomenon.

Had the project known how and when to "fire the customer", we'd have a lot more people (names you'd recognize) contributing to KDE still today. (Again, replace 'KDE' with any number of other project names there ...)

It would also be good to educate the user base that, yes, just like in any other business relationship you can be refused service; that there is a quid pro quo that goes on, even if it doesn't involve money, and that not understanding your role in it can result in rather dire consequences.

Granted, F/OSS has more in common with a biological environment than a corporate bureaucracy ....... but the principles in this area are probably quite similar.

The irony of the situation is that by overly worshiping the user as we do right now (understandable given the history of F/OSS, particularly on the desktop), we lose more users in the long run.

And that's really the true crux of the conversation here, not "Does KDE need any users?" The context around Jason's blog actually illuminates this quite clearly, imho.

So, summary by leading question time ;) ..

Is the average contributor worth more than the average user? Yes. Do we need users? Yes. Lots of them? Yes. Do we need every single user? No. Do we need to know how to tell the ones we don't need apart from the rest? Yes. Do we need to make it OK to fire a customer? Yes, if they are firing the right ones. Does the F/OSS community need (friendly) education on the matter? Yes.

p.s. A bit of a "something to chew over" postscript: as for software needing users like a book needs readers (and other such analogies..); that's not really true. It's even debatable whether it's commonly true.

I write for myself all the time; many people do: diaries. Today, many diaries are called "blogs" and are publicly readable. Odd that: audience, though not the prime purpose.

Strictly speaking, those books I've written that sit upon my shelf (I actually write poetry and short stores, not diaries =) do have a reader: me. But it'd fail your "book needs an audience" test, I think. To be honest, I don't tend to read my own books that much even.

Likewise, I also often write software for myself. It's useful stuff, but it's written specifically for myself. No audience. Some of those things I've written have also escaped into the wild ;)

I could also go on about the music I've recorded.

So not all creative works are made expressly for an audience, even if they sometimes accidentally have one anyways.

Does this matter? I don't know .. but sometimes making overly broad assumptions of people's motivations can result in the person you're trying to talk to about a serious subject ignore the otherwise useful and valuable content.

=)

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"From where I’m sitting, the attitude that “my FOSS project doesn’t need users” is a strong argument for users to support proprietary software instead"

Very well said. This looks like a good moment to invite FOSS advocates to read again the "Seven things we're tired of hearing from software hackers" (http://digifreedom.net/node/56). Making it easier for non-contributors to feel at home and welcome with FOSS, without demanding anything back directly, is one of the main things to do to make FOSS succeed.

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We all have our crosses to bear. Some of us dont like elitist atittude, some of us dont like extortionists and those who would drive a wedge through the community for their own gain.

As a Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer and someone who doesnt take to threats to kindly, nor those who align themselves with those who threathen me and the code I write, I take your 'taken aback' stance with a large grain of salt. One random developer vs decision makers who willingly try to make a distinction between clean Linux and dirty, IP stealing Linux: yeah, I can see how you would get offended by this...

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"An open source project without users is like a band without an audience, a restaurant with no customers, or a writer with no readers."

An open source project without users is like Harry Melvin without the Bluenotes... It'll never go platinum.

-------------------------------

Just a rambling thought here...... Without users virally spreading the word on your software (whether it's KDE, or Firefox, or Linux or ...) how does somebody expect to pick up new contributors? Believe it or not, there are people out there who have the required skills, but no knowledge of Linux or FOSS. At the university I was attending, none of the other students I talked to had used, and in some cases had not even heard of Linux. The school (like so many others) was busy churning out .Net coders to go to work in Microsoft shops across the country, to produce yet another boring database application for yet another faceless business. Yawn.

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Maybe it's not completely frivolous to talk about poisonous developers too.

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People have really been dumping on the KDE developers lately. They are reacting in predictably human ways (especially lately, with that insulting "should be forked" statement). Give them some slack.

Many of the criticisms of individual features seem to boil down to one of two things:

1) People hate change (the thing with the menu--seriously, what's the big deal),

2) People see change in areas they don't care about, while meanwhile things they DO care about remain incomplete (the thing with the desktop icons--scratching a place few found itchy).

The discussion about whether something should or should not be called a "release" is flawed. Everybody can give an example of a useful "beta" (I'll say "bind 9.5RC1" for the sake of argument), and useless "released" software. Given that we KNOW such designations are meaning-free (like "organic"--what, can they make inorganic tomatoes, now--how would those work, with no carbon atoms?), it's inappropriate to suggest the KDE people did wrong by letting 4.0 be a "release."

Yeah, I'd probably have waited to upgrade until Liquid Weather was ported to QT 4. I didn't research it. Mea culpa. Kdesvn doesn't integrate into EITHER konqueror nor dolphin now. That kinda sucks. I didn't look into it before upgrading, though.

Yeah, it might have been nice if somebody who was smarter than me (for example, the TECH PRESS), had evaluated KDE 4 dispassionately so I'd have had a better idea of what I should expect, instead of "ooh, shiny!"

But it's a bit disingenuous, even then, to suggest that somebody else should have been an adult just so I don't have to be.

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It's simple, Lisa. You say:

---- I am amazed at Harris's elitist, snobbish idea that I shouldn't use KDE if I can't or won't contribute to the community. You have to be *kidding* me! ----

On the other hand, how can you use proprietary software without contributing to its makers? Answer: you can't unless you steal said software.

Here's a group giving you stuff for free, asking for a bit of helpif you can. If you can't they want nothing from you and you can keep using said software.

What's your problem?

Quid pro quo and all that.

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I believe all of you have missed the point.

As with any project, the only necessity for progress is that there are those who will contribute.

The best example is my stamp collection. I don't need admirers to advance the project. I am fully capable of progress on my own.

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"An open source project without users is like a band without an audience, a restaurant with no customers, or a writer with no readers. What’s the point in creating something useful, if no one uses it?"

I would bet that for most (if not all) of those examples that you give, they would unabashedly do what they love whether or not an audience was present. Ever hear of a starving artist? Their situation is such that the audience is a means to an ends, with the ends being the fact that they get to do what they love all the time (and still provide food and shelter).

And thus we are back where we started; free and open-source software is exactly that: free (like beer). However, _if_ you charge for software, then of course you need users (for monetary gain).

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I actually train new managers for one of the largest companies on earth. While management skills in general are lacking, "customer recovery" in particular is missing. A good rule of thumb is to assume anyone who complains is technically illiterate, which puts them in a demographic that indicates they will in turn turn off 15 potential customers (users?) to your product. Further multiply that by the same rule of thumb that only 1 in 100 dissatisfied people communicate a complaint to the proper people. Storms in teacups can quickly become a mass-exodus without the right management ;-)

Which is what this absurd KDE4 issue is - a storm in a teacup. Sure, I myself am going to GNOME because I don't like the apparent decision to out-bling Vista with KDE, but hey, Linux is full of great DEs, and the KDE devs are sure working hard as hell. The SuSE blowup is beyond absurd - who cares what order it was placed on an unticked menu? But I'm not going to throw a fit because KDE isn't cow-towing to my personal wants.

However, on the other side, this *is* exactly the reason those who tried Linux in 2k when it was going to "take over the world" aren't jumping on the bandwagon now. The elitist snob users do enough damage. Having elitist snob developers like this is not only an attitude sure to keep new users away, but to put current users off not only from a great project full of hard working developers, but possibly from Linux in general as this attitude becomes more and more hinted at if not outright stated (see Gentoo...)

True, some bad apples can spoil anyone's mood. But if you can't (or don't possess the skills to) respond in a manner not only not damaging to your project, but also don't know how to turn any positive into a negative (ANY complaint can be a gift in disguise if handled properly), then not responding is the better option.

Despite my current lack of interest in KDE4's current direction, as *I* couldn't code if my children were on fire, I'd be more than happy to share some basics with anyone in the organization who is interested. Respond if you'd like.

If not, best of luck to your project. You've obviously been working VERY hard.

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