
Why Users Dumped Your Open Source App for Proprietary Software - fogus
http://www.itworld.com/open-source/77409/why-users-dumped-your-open-source-app-proprietary-software
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moe
Why users dumped your your itworld.com website for better news sources:

    
    
       * Microscopic text
    
       * Content squeezed in between walls of Ads
    
       * Content split over 5 pages to serve more ads
    
       * Average content-quality is so low (zero substance linkbait)
         that you could just as well serve headline + Lorem Ipsum along
         with your ads.

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TomOfTTB
Not a lot of content here but as someone who is in charge of a small Open
Source project I feel the need to address her few points.

Her first two points go together which are: Dumped because it didn't have the
right feature and Dumped because "setup and configuration is too fiddly". I
have one basic response to both those: Open Source software still needs to be
designed well. You still need to do Usability studies, you still need to test
and you still need to worry about aesthetics. Do that and you'll have as good
a chance as proprietary software does.

On "dumped because there was no support" I have roughly the same answer as
above. If you want a business open source document to work you need to put
some time into writing support docs. We actually wrote support docs and
distributed them to several computer repair places in the area. We then passed
their numbers on to the people using the software and it worked out for
everyone (since the repair people were still cheaper than proprietary software
support contracts).

So the bottom line here is common sense. Developing Open Source software is
still developing software and all the rules still apply

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mrfish
Re your last sentance. Can somebody email the developers at Joomla about that
please.

~~~
mahmud
No, I rather see Joomla users suffer.

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zandorg
Dupe?

