Disclaimer
Not trying to blame anyone here. I‘m just taking an idea I‘ve read and spinning it further:
Intro
A lot of people use free open source software (foss), Linux being one of them. But a lot less actually help make this software. If I ask them why, they always say „I don’t have the coding skills!“.
Maybe its worth pointing out that you don‘t need them. In a lot of cases it’s better to not have any so you can see stuff with a „consumer view“.
In that situation you can file issues on github and similar places. You can write descriptions that non technical people can understand. You can help translate and so on, all depending on your skills.
Other reasons?
I‘d really like to know so the foss community can talk about making it worthwile for non coders to participate.
If you give me an extremely easy way to submit feedback, then I will. Don’t expect me to go way out of my way, though, researching how to get into contact with you and such. I don’t actually care that much, you know how many products exist out there, right?
But, just by way of example, an early access game I started playing recently has a very convenient button in the main HUD for submitting bug reports/suggestions, and I’ve been considering different ideas to submit with it. Any I cannot throw out as impractical or counter-productive will get submitted eventually. I’ll also report bugs I encounter, of course.
I will not look up your team’s forums just to talk to you though.
Absolutely relatable. Thats why we need to make this a more streamlined process.
Like every foss software, be it games or whatever, should have an easy way to report bugs.
One thing I see different is foss-software and -games: You getting something for free and asking for „everything be dead easy“ without helping it become dead easy is not the most healthy.
You cant compare foss software with for profit software that either takes your money, serves you ads or outright sells your data. Thats only making the world a worse place.
The devs dont make money off you, yet you‘re saying you‘ll not give anything back except if they pave your way to it. I think you should pay for foss software then.
Side thought: If someone just puts an email address for receiving feedback somewhere where I’ll see it, I’ll use that too. A UI button isn’t really necessary, just so long as I can send the feedback without having to do my own research in order to do so.
I can write an email though.
Simple but great idea. Thanks for elaborating.
In principle I agree with you. But people sitting behind their keyboards will also be fairly pragmatic about it, pretty often.
Thanks. I dont get the pragmatic part yet. Care to elaborate?
People suffer from limited attention. Trying to take a purely principled approach and investing the energy to give back to every project you may want to can become impractical. Especially if one had a busy family and professional life too, it may just not be worth it, however much someone may wish to help.
It’s just the organization of priorities, and simply put, sometimes a few minutes really is too much to ask in certain circumstances.
Thus, removing as many hurdles as possible is probably a worthy investment of a devs time if they want large amounts of feedback. Pragmatic, not based on any ideas of what might be right or wrong, but simply what is probably going to happen most of the time, with no consideration to why that might be or what might be better. Pragmatism is frequently unethical.
I agree. Giving back to every project you end up using as much as you gain from it is impractical but I‘m merely talking about giving back at all, either through work or through money.
So, do I understand correctly that you assume that a dev would usually go the way of least resistance hence pragmatic?
No, not necessarily. I don’t think a dev usually would, or even should. It depends entirely on why they’re working on whatever the project is. To put it in more mathematical terms, I’m essentially saying that the amount of feedback any particular dev receives on their project is going to be a function of only really two major variables: How many total users they have, and how convenient they make it to deliver the feedback to them.
Those two variables are most, but not all, of what governs what happens. They can do with that information whatever they wish. If they want a lot of feedback, they should make it easy. If they do not wish a lot, they should not make it easy. That’s all, really. It’s not particularly high level thinking or anything.
I think its a skill nonetheless. Boiling something down to a merely binary or the most basic structure is not something everyone can do. Thanks for elaborating. You might be a great fit if any form of “foss improvement pact” ever comes to existence. Because most people who have deep technical knowledge lack social skills and the other way around. But being able to think very laterally or change mindsets is rare.
Going Medieval has a Bug Report button in the top right corner during gameplay at all times. It’s an early access game, and the devs have been actively updating it and adding new features over the past couple years since it first went into EA. What’s there is great, and you can spend tons of hours just building up your settlement.
Totally. Everyone has a threshold of pain in the ass above which they don’t care enough to contribute.
Some want to contribute but find that having to use git, let’s say, is too big a hurdle, otherwise they’d totally contribute. Ok, so lower the barrier to entry. Make it less of a pain in the ass.
You don’t need to make it so easy that any idiot on earth can submit changes or the project will be flooded with bullshit probably. But for those who would otherwise be dedicated contributors but for that one thing, fix the one thing.