> > If you are determined that end-users should be encouraged to continue to
> > do those things we are trying to stop them doing, then developers will
> > simply find another, spam-free way to communicate (such as private mail)
> > and we will all suffer from that.
>
> Maybe I am misunderstanding something. How would the developers finding
> another way to communicate cause anymore suffering than the current
> state for us?
Because we would no longer be able to see what's going on in the
development process.
> There are some exceptional circumstances in which bugs are
> addressed quickly and effectively in Bugzilla or here, but for the most
> part they are completely ignored.
There are around 5000 open bugs in Bugzilla at any one time. A given
developer, judging by the status reports, looks at around six a week.
There are a couple of hundred developers. You do the math.
> The problem is not the users, but a culture that wants to be in the
> business of creating products but doesn't want to be bothered with the
> feedback of the people for whom they are making the product.
mozilla.org is _not_ making a product for individual end-users. It is
making a product for Beonex, AOL, IBM, Nokia, Red Hat and all the other
companies who produce Mozilla-based products.
As an example, I have worked in the past for a 200-person code development
house. They sell source code to a small number (say six) of big customers,
for a lot of cash per customer, who package it up and sell it to their
users in the millions.
The company I worked for provides "second level support" - they will talk
to one person from each company to deal with issues which have been
escalated through the support structure. If all the customers of the six
large companies called the coding company, the result would be chaos,
annoyed customers and no work done.
I think there's a strong parallel :-)
Gerv
