On open source and people's expectations...

02/06/2005 16:01 | Categories: LifeType | 4 Comments 

There's this guy in our forums who's apparently got a bit annoyed with our behaviour. Browsing through the plogworld.net referrers, I found a link to this:

http://www.bloghoster.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=689

He's apparently considering switching from pLog to BlogHoster (a similar solution but not free and not GPLed)...

A pearl from the link above:

I am currently using open source code as the base for my blogging site, however lately have been becoming very frustated with the lack of customization options without first editing or adding core class code changes.

And another one:

I have used them [pLog] for about a year now, and have steadily grown tired of the lack of insight the Devs have, as they only want to see things from a Dev point of view and refuse to see things from a 'Normal' user or 'Community' point of view."

Do we really lack insight? From whose viewpoint is that assertion made?

Note that this is the same guy who came up with a less-than-optimal new layout for his admin interface, totally and absolutely confusing, and then said that Jon never likes anything he does because he told him it was confusing. Perhaps if he actually knew what he was doing...

He's also the one who requested buddy lists a while ago. He did a good writeup about it (credit should be given where it is due) in the forums but that was it. Was he really expecting that we'd implement his wishes right away? How about our own roadmaps? How about we first fix issues that really need to be addressed?

For the record, this is the guy who promised me a while ago to create a nice tutorial for end-users, showing how to post, how to add files, etc. Needless to say, I am still waiting for those documents.

Open source is really starting to feel annoying because of this. People think they can demand everything from the development team and they cannot be bothered to make a small effort to achieve their goals. Heck, we've got a Paypal donation link in our home page for half a year now and we haven't even collected 100Ä yet.

I know this post probably sounds like I am an elitist bastard, but this kind of attitudes really annoy the hell out of me.

The funny thing is that when he posted the list of plugins he's currently using, one of the BH's forums moderator was really surpirsed at the amount of extra features one can get with pLog... No shit!, we haven't spent so many hours working on a extensible architecture for the sake of working on it!

And this brings me to another point: no matter how many things you give users for free (moblogging? gravatar integration? anti spam measures? guest books? content filters? comment moderation?), they will always remember you by what you do NOT offer...

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