On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 18:42:17 UTC, Joseph Rushton
Wakeling wrote:
On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 15:34:44 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
This is widely advertised statement I can't agree with. For me
goal is having working language that works. Getting users is
indirect way to achieve that by attracting more contributions
but user just by itself has not value to _me_.
An indirect benefit is still a benefit -- as I said in my
previous post, these things aren't a zero-sum game. Among
other things, more users means not only the likelihood of more
contributions, but also more bugs and points of failure
identified, more experienced people to use as a sounding board
for ideas, more people to call on for help when you have a
problem, and so on.
It also means more people asking for stuff, then doing nothing to
contribute towards it, as though the D community is their slave
labor. Not saying this about Manu, just that there are people
with weird expectations of open source.
I guess what I'd say is that, yes, I get how the idealistic and
inspirational stuff can be irritating and feel like delusion,
but it can be a pretty powerful tool to help facilitate the
process of cooperation between different people who do indeed
all have different itches to scratch. Being "nice" isn't just
a matter of being liked or not (not the most important thing in
the world); it's a really handy means of minimizing the amount
of unnecessary friction in a community. It doesn't need to
involve any rose-tinted spectacles or illusions about people's
motivations, just a recognition of what is going to help
promote positive or negative reactions from other people.
I'll add that a majority of contributors do not solely scratch
their own itches, but contribute in other ways that do not
directly benefit them. Maybe that's because there are indirect
benefits to having better docs, or they just become invested in
the project over time. Very few operate solely from
self-interest, though most probably contribute a majority of
their work for that reason.
