>From my perspective, Jörg's concern is very simple.

There are actions and arrangements that have been made that encourage certain 
expectations in the mind of persons who participate and contribute in various 
ways.  And when those expectations are unsatisfied, that leads to assessments 
and opinions about the project.

The Apache OpenOffice project could take responsibility for the fact that some 
aspects of our structures do encourage such expectations.  A possible approach 
is to remove something that establishes expectations that there is no desire to 
see as creating any commitment on the part of the project.   Having voting 
buttons is an example.  Another possibility would be to add more transparency 
and visibility to the stuck issues that have received many votes and that are 
not going anywhere (and the rationale for that).

In other situations, there is immediate action and sometimes abrupt action 
taken to clarify a mistaken expectation.  Someone who wants telephone contact 
from a support person, or who has some other demand is usually straightened-out 
immediately, even though bouncing someone to the Forums or users @o.a.o for 
"support" is sometimes rather circumspect.  Folks who think posts to lists are 
private communications are dissuaded of that.

Of course, participants and observers take away whatever impressions of the AOO 
project that they do.  In some case, it is important to accept that our 
arrangements contribute to some of those and that it is in our hands to find a 
responsible adjustment.

I am not lobbying for a particular resolution (no guessing, please).  I do 
think that the situation deserves recognition and not deflection.

 - Dennis

PS: My all-time favorite unreconcilable voted-for issue is the request for 
"Reveal Codes" in the manner of WordPerfect.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] 
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2013 06:13
To: dev@openoffice.apache.org
Subject: Re: A question about existing practices

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Jörg Schmidt <joe...@j-m-schmidt.de> wrote:
>
>> From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org]
>> A promise to do what?
>
> The opinion of the user to be taken seriously because you have asked him to 
> speak his mind.
>
>> But a feature request?
>
> This is an opinion of our users. It should be important to us.
[ ... ]
> It's about respect for what we bring to our users, because it is a 
> fundamental difference between what we need to do and what we should do so 
> voluntarily.
>

The title of the tread is "A question about existing practices".  I
think the facts are quite clear.  If we have many 10 year old
untouched BZ issues then fixing these issues is not part of our
existing practice, whether you define that as mandatory, voluntary or
whatever.  "Practice" is what we do, not what we talk about doing.  If
you want to argue that we talk a lot about fixing old issues, and say
many solemn things about how important they are, then I would agree
with you 100%.  But we don't actually do anything about them.

[ ... ]


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