On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 11:27:02AM +0000, [email protected] wrote: > Firstly, I think bugzilla has no place in any discussions of > usability. Bugs are absolute, and bug tracking software is designed
Of course. > Secondly, and ironically, there is no greater divide in the software > community between developers and users than in the FOSS community. > While most closed source, commercial software has various easy ways > for users to give feedback, Linux doesn't. You make a statement without backing it up. > Barrier 1: The majority of Linux distro's (Ubuntu and Suse to name > two) have no place on their forum for discussing ideas or engaging > the community - it is all one sided 'support'. There are plenty of Brainstorm. > Barrier 2: The lack of any feedback forums above is understandable > in context. The main distro's package the upstream apps and release > them - they are not directly responsible for problems in Gnome's etc > codebase. As a result there is no real way of knowing who made or Don't follow as there are forums where you can provide feedback. > maintains which program or module to suggest improvements to. > Identifying and reporting anything non-trivial is in itself > non-trivial. Unless you want to blog about it, there is largely no > venue for feedback. Huh? > Thirdly, there seems very few systems designed to engage such users > at the developer end. As a developer myself there seems to be > nowhere to go to discuss such issues. I was hoping that given the This is the same for any software. [..] > XP, and the reason that it is so good is because the massive > backlash of hate and criticism of Vista (by an audiance largely > looking to find fault) gave them a massive list of key issues to > address. I would place good money on the fact that if Vista was You're overlooking one key point: Feedback was not in any usable form. Blogs/media/etc. > Free software though, as stated above, has no real outlet for users > to speak their mind about problems. The community is largely self I disagree. There are loads and loads of forums and so on. Developers rarely look at those things, but that is something different. > censoring (as who would complain about free food?) and the people Self censoring? Don't see that. > who are not happy with the software largely just go back to > Windows/OSX. I always feel that the opinions of 1 unhappy customer > is more useful than the opinions of 100 happy ones, but the Linux > community in general consists entirely of 'happy ones' - everyone > who is unhappy just leaves, rather than sticks around and tries to > change things. Again, you're stating things without backing it up. > Before any real progress can be made on usability and improving the > marketshare of Gnome (and Linux as a result) these issues should > largely be addressed. Users need a place to say why they don't like 1001 things are barriers before 'x' will have any market share. > something without being called idiots or trolls. There is very > little point in having a community contributed OS that the community > cannot contribute to. Most users can contribute ideas after all, You say there is little point, but I don't see 1) Why you state this 2) That it is true > but few can contribute code - which seems to be the sole focus. In case you're not aware: Yes, it is a meritocracy. Don't see how this is a sole problem of Free Software though. > Flame away! I know you do not mean this, but please don't suggest such things. To repeat: http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct Anyway, thank you for the long email, but I don't think it will lead anywhere. Don't see any practical purpose of this thread other than to start a long discussion without any end. Don't want to be negative, but I guess you have some pet peeve you want fixed asap and nobody looked at it? -- Regards, Olav _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
