Le 20/05/2017 à 12:10, Peter Kovacs a écrit :
Our best recruitment base is our user base. The more we use them the tighter the link between user and developer gets, the more probable it is we get people. Community feeling is a strong motivator for doing the right thing.
Well, remember that the user base of applications like AOO is not the same as for other more geek-oriented application in OpenSource field. We face mostly basic users who wants things done at no cost and with equivalent features to MS Office ones for example. They don't have any knowledge nor will to engage very far. According to what we see in the forum, it's rather difficult to even make them file a bug report.
And people we have, we lack imho skill. And this we need to build. We need to open ways into open office development. Set starting points with view little knowledge and need to slowly guide the volunteers to the deeper end of our projects. Currently we don't have roads like I described above, we only have a fast and frightening jungle.
Personally, I've very little knowledge of Basic macros (I sometimes help/improve macros in the forum) and I'm a fan of AOO but doing code (I mean for development) is not in my intention at all, that's too huge a step. So, yes, quite a frightening jungle. Let's face it: LibO seems to be doing better to get devs (that's how I see it from the outside, I don't know how true it is in reality). So what is the AOO plan exactly? I guess that committers want to invest their time in a project that has a future so that their own work can last in that project. Should AOO be focused on stability and robustness (and less on new features)? Or should it try to keep up with LibO (at least by implementing features not that hard to code and are considered must have in LibO)?...
Getting users to evaluate what is a bug and what is not would be in my eyes a huge step forward.
This is something we do in the forum. We help them investigate and we urge them to file a report when we can confirm there is indeed a bug (some forum volunteers even file the bug themselves when the user is not willing).
Of course the next step would be solving them. But for that we can vote, measure or find other ways to promote them
As said in my other message, votes are cast in bugzilla. However, in the forum we did see a clear trend: in the past, users bothered to subscribe bugzilla to vote. They don't anymore. They clearly switch to something else (be it LibO or MS Office).
Maybe slicing them up in micro jobs would work for some. Setting up a bazaar another. I would like to take one step after another. And only do things we think that they work with people we have. Because I do believe in that we need to do things in order that people join.
For sure. What people do see is that there is quite few development and little bug solving. It does not help to restore trust in the project. But again, look at this list: https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17677#p81363 I raised this issue several times on this list and still nothing. Think of how users talk about AOO after having lost files that way. I do know that it is not an easy one but it is the kind of bug that definitively damages AOO reputation. Finding the root cause and fixing it (or changing the save process to avoid it) would be enough to release a new major version. That would send a clear message that the community listen to the users. For the record, I don't have any skills to help devs. However, we spent some time with forum volunteers trying to find a hint, but nothing interesting so far.
All the best Peter
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