Le mercredi 20 octobre 2010 14:24:51, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit : > > 2010/10/20 Michael Scherer <[email protected]>: > > > > "Jeroen: One of the big, essential differences between Fedora and other > > distributions is that we’d rather gain one contributor than a dozen > > users. In fact, if I could lose 1000 users right now and gain a > > contributor, I’d do it. It’s not up to me, but if it were, I’d do it." > > This seems to me a very short-sighted point of view. It may be right > if you start a project and you do not have enough contributors to get > it going at all. But for something where the basic number of > contributors is already available it's time to turn users into > committed users. Besides, the PR footwork done by a large user base is > cost-free and a powerful instrument. PR is as essential as > development. You can have the best product in the world but no success > if you have no PR (that was one of Mandriva's faults). > > How are contributors become attracted to a new project? Besides other > means (fellow contributors, friends, etc.) they become attracted as > users. They look at the product from a user's point of view, they like > it and decide that this is something they want to spend some time, > sweat and tears on (remembering the fact that contributors primarily > work to scratch their own itches with the project they like (IIRC it > was you who wrote that)). So, if you can find a contributor, fine. But > finding 1000 users bears the chance that there may be more than one > contributor or user-turns-contributor among them. > > Yes, I agree, "the trick is balance". > > +1 for wobo on this one :)
Samuel
