
Dear User of My Open Source Project - blasdel
http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/fyi-my-open-source-users/
======
makecheck
Even if a person is frustrated or doesn't communicate well, he or she is still
_telling me_ about a problem. As a developer, I find this much better than not
knowing about the issue at all. How many people receive thousands of E-mails
for their thousands of downloads? Feedback is rare.

Usually, frustration is rooted elsewhere. The person has something to do, and
is annoyed that it (still) can't be done, probably after trying my project
along with a number of others. I try not to take this personally.

So my first response is to be civil. I don't even talk about anything mean
they might have said, I focus entirely on the problem. I solve that problem,
and say "here you are".

The response to this has always been gratitude, and even amazement that I
solved the problem. It seems that once the person reaches the point of yelling
at a developer, that person has given up and doesn't _really_ expect anything
anymore.

A community is built one person at a time.

~~~
tjr
<http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html>

_When you receive bug reports, keep in mind that bug reports are crucial for
your work. If you don't know about problems, you cannot fix them. So always
thank each person who sends a bug report._

...

 _By all means help individual users when you feel like it, if you feel you
have the time available. But be careful to limit the amount of time you spend
doing this-- don't let it eat away the time you need to maintain the program!
Know how to say no; when you are pressed for time, just "thanks for the bug
report -- I will fix it" is enough response._

------
tom_rath
...and that, dear readers, is why commercial software can compete against
free, open source alternatives.

~~~
mapleoin
um... no, not really. There is proprietary (you mean proprietary, not
commercial) software without any kind of support provided to the user and
there is open source software with _commercial_ support.

~~~
tom_rath
No, I'm speaking to those who are worried about their commercial software not
being able to compete with 'free' alternatives.

That '_commerical_' support you're referring to doesn't scale worth a damn, so
it's easy to out-compete those folks as a business and provide a superior
product.

~~~
christonog
"That '_commerical_' support you're referring to doesn't scale worth a damn"

Please elaborate on this comment. Redhat has basically been the poster child
for the free software/commercial support business model for over a decade now.
I believe support for an open source software product can be scaled as a
business.

~~~
tom_rath
Joel Spolsky summed it up pretty well in his last Inc. article:

 _"...The Web consulting business was great, but it had one problem: limited
margins. You could charge only so much for an hour of some consultant's time
-- in those days, maybe $200. Some of that went to overhead (say $20) and some
to pay the consultant's salary (maybe $70). That leaves you with a mere $110
per hour in gross profit. That's a lot of money, but it paled in comparison
with margins in the software industry, in which you can produce additional
copies of an application at virtually no cost."_

So, if a body-shopping service company is competing against another body-
shopping service company, they're facing the same per-employee costs and will
have no problems in their market. However, if a body-shopping service company
is competing against commercial software for the exact same product and
market, commercial software will face lower costs and receive higher revenue
for the same work and so will have more resources to bury that competing body-
shop every time.

Also, if our company receives a service call, we regard it as a failure of our
product to address our customer's needs. If a 'commercial' open source company
receives that same call, they regard it as money earned from a support ticket.

Given that difference, which software product would you prefer to run in your
business?

~~~
christonog
Not sure why you downvoted, I thought you made some great points. However,
your example helps illustrate what I've been saying.

Say you want a car. You may want to go to the dealership and just buy one
(Toyota's automated process, thus lowering marginal cost). However, maybe
you're the hotrod type and would rather build it and customize it yourself.
You pay for someone to help you build it and troubleshoot any mistakes you
make along the way. Sure, it took longer to build, and was probably more
expensive, but it's exactly want you wanted. I think that's where the value of
opensource/support lies.

Commercial open source companies (at least Redhat) use subscription models for
their support (in addition to consulting, professional QA, etc) so I don't
think they would consider troubleshooting software money earned. In fact, I
think this gives them a greater incentive to maintain the quality of their
software so they get less support tickets and scale to have more subscription
fees per support person. I guess you can say that RedHat, through their
support, sells the peace of mind of having that support person if you want to
go the open source route.

~~~
tom_rath
I've no idea why I'm receiving downvotes either. I guess a few folks are angry
about having their business model attacked with reality.

Addressing your post: Software isn't a car and the marginal cost to
manufacture more software licenses is zero. When I direct an hour of effort to
our commercial software, I'm gaining many dollars of future passive revenue
thanks to that created wealth.

Contrast that with services and a 'free' product, where each hour of effort
gets a support dollar but generates no wealth at all! Pitted against that
means of generating revenue, a service company giving away its product is
going to lose in the long-run every time.

To see this, just look at the software marketplace: Aside from the solitary
black-swan exception of RedHat (which arguably sells licenses instead of
services anyhow), where are the profitable open source support contract
companies?

I can spool up 3,000 software licenses sold today without batting an eye (and
add in support charges on top of that if needed) making a ton of cash with
which to hire employees for product improvement, but 3,000 hours of support is
a huge cost requiring a great many employees to manage before even a penny of
profit is obtained.

Bringing this back to my original point: Commercial software companies can
easily dominate 'free' open source alternatives given that reality, so they
can safely ignore their free 'competition'.

------
Tichy
I think an important question is: does it matter to me how many people use my
(open source) software or not? And it seems to me usually it does matter. More
users means higher likelihood for other people to provide patches. It means
higher esteem for me, which should translate into higher consulting rates.
Therefore I don't quite get the "fuck you, customer" attitude. If you don't
care, why even bother to open source the software? Just keep it private on
your hard disk.

(Note: I didn't read the whole rant. Presumably there were some obnoxious
customers. Whatever - how likely is it that they read his rant and change
their ways? Not very likely imo).

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I make some of my code available for others to use as they will. I do not
consider myself to be an open-source developer. I really don't care how many
people use it, but it's nice that some people find it useful. I have the code,
it costs me nothing to make it available, and others think it makes their
world better, so that's OK then.

I don't have an aggressive "customer" attitude, but I get pretty annoyed when
someone who uses the software then demands that I change something. Not
request, not suggest, not offer to help, but demand that it be changed.

I'm not looking for more esteem, better rates, "karma" of any sort, I'm just
happy to make it available because I think the world can't be worse off, and
might be better off. I really, really don't care how many people use it, and
what is clear is that keeping it private on my hard drive means that there is
_no_ chance it makes the world a better place.

You don't seem to be able to comprehend the idea that people will sometimes
just make their work available to others without any desire or need to
recognition or compensation. I think the world would be a better place if
people did.

So I do.

~~~
Tichy
"You don't seem to be able to comprehend the idea that people will sometimes
just make their work available to others without any desire or need to
recognition or compensation."

If that really were so, then why the rant? So a part of you seems to care. The
"demanding" customers are basically just dumb or socially challenged, so I
would pity them, not write a long rant.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
First of all, your use of "you" immediately after the reference to the long
rant seems to show a confusion. I'm not the author of the long rant, although
I'm in largely the same situation. It's not especially relevant that I didn't
write the linked article, but I thought I'd make that clear.

Secondly, it may be that you didn't intend it, but your first sentence is
calling me a liar. I object to that, and ask that you withdraw it. It _is_ so,
I say it is so as a matter of fact because I am one of them, and while you may
legitimately express doubt, starting a sentence with "If that _were_ so ..."
(emphasis added) is calling me a liar, and I think it's out of order.

Thirdly, I really don't care if people use my code, but I really do care that
some people then behave in the obnoxious manner that they do.

You may be sufficiently socially disconnected - I don't know if you are, but
you might be - to pity people who do the internet equivalent of repeatedly
spitting in your face, but I'm not, and I object to it, especially when they
use my work.

~~~
Tichy
"but your first sentence is calling me a liar"

Oh dear, I guess if we were in a bar we would now start a bar fight and hit
each other over the head with beer glassed? Sorry if I hurt your feelings, and
no, I did not intend to call you a liar, just probing a little. I see a degree
of difference, but it is not important enough to me to have a fight over it.

Anyway, sorry I even chimed in onto the conversation. Obviously people have
different reasons to publish their stuff.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
> _Oh dear, I guess if we were in a bar we would now start a bar fight and hit
> each other over the head with beer glassed?_

If we were face to face I suspect it would've gone completely differently. I
don't think you'd've said what you did in the way that you did. I was simply
trying to point out that you were, in my opinion, being rather more aggressive
than perhaps you thought.

I accept that you didn't intend to call me a liar.

I'm not sorry you chimed in. I haven't down-mud you because I think you have
added value to this thread. You have expressed a point of view. I think what
you said was wrong, and I've supplied my point of view as a counter to it. The
thread has been longer than I'd've liked, but that's the way it's gone.

I hope I've expressed myself clearly enough that you now understand my
position, even if you might not agree with it.

Call it closed.

------
Semiapies
A "license" like that would be a good thing, I think. Whenever I hear about
some potentially useful-to-me 0.1-version OS project, it'd be nice to know
things about it. Things like, "Is the developer ever going to spend more than
that first weekend poking at it?" or "Does the developer think of this code as
similar to a discarded toilet he's left on a curb?"

I get the point about entitled-feeling users, but there's a flip side: in the
comments, he goes on about welcoming bug reports, etc. from those users. He
wants users to bug-test for him and help him improve his code, but he's not
paying them for the QC work any more than they're paying him for coding.

If you release software, for better or worse, you set up some social
expectations. If you don't want people complaining to you and wanting bug-
fixes and support, either _don't release that software_ or make it abundantly
clear in the license, download site, etc. that the software isn't supported.

------
poppysan
Hilarious...That's like complaining about the food at a homeless shelter. Its
free and, in this situation, unsupported. Buy a commercial product if you want
above and beyond customer service...

------
sutro
Dear bloggers who begin rants with the word _Dear_ : Please stop.

~~~
jodrellblank
Dear person who read a blog post and whined about it - everything mentioned in
this blog post about free software, except about free text instead.

------
Tichy
Dear self-important open source developer: I have never heard about you, and I
don't care about your little private project. Good luck with your freelancing
work.

P.S.: either you a) don't care what people think about your project, then why
the rant or b) you care, then why the rant?

