Hi :) Something that often annoys me is that we seem to ignore all the work of all the devs who are paid to work on LibreOffice.
I thought something like 10%-20% of devs are employed by various companies, governments and other organisations? The advantage for the organisations, companies and governments is that they still get the suite far cheaper than they would pay in license fees PLUS they get to choose what bugs their own devs focus on. If you don't pay a dev then you still get to use a fantastic office suite for free and a fairly tiny donation goes a loooong way to improving it further. Of course we can grumble but i think it's important to sit back and appreciate just what we do get too. if we worked harder to encourage more companies to use LO and helped them find ways to employ part-time or full-time devs with the savings they would make on license fees then it might start to "snowball" even more quickly. Regards from Tom :) On 12 November 2013 13:53, Charles-H. Schulz <[email protected]> wrote: > Paul, > > Just completing Pedro's answers inline... > > Le Tue, 12 Nov 2013 05:23:31 -0800 (PST), > Pedro <[email protected]> a écrit : > >> Paul-6 wrote >> > I think there's a dangerous perception here: The perception that >> > the LO developers work on nothing except what they want to work on. >> >> I didn't mean to say that. >> I'm aware that some developers work on whatever is needed and fix the >> most urgent bugs/regressions. >> But out of 300 developers, there must be people who can fix the >> "boring" bugs and the "not important" bugs... Of course you would >> have to ask these developers to start with bug #1 and fix it before >> moving to #2 >> >> Michael Meeks once wrote "Developers don't like to be told what to >> do". I'm sure they don't. But if nobody does then there is no >> solution for bugs that keep lingering... > > and nobody says the system is perfect. ;-) > But to come back to Paul's objection, yes, developers work on what they > want to work on. Their motivation can be anything from a salary to some > dream they want or yet another thing that keeps them awake at night. > Somewhere in between I'm sure there's a reasonable guy . But "whatever > is needed" is prone to a wide range of interpretation. > > Let me give you an example. While "your" bug (good point Pedro, by the > way) wasn't being fixed, some guy called Caolan McNamara, who wrote the > code of the word processing module back in the days of OpenOffice.org > took on the daunting task of rewriting the entire graphical system of > LibreOffice. And mind you, we're talking about over 6Million lines of > code for a suite like LibreOffice. Was it necessary? Hell yes. Was it a > high priority? Absolutely. Did he have the time to focus on the bug > you're mentioning? No. > > But to him, this objective was of the highest importance and it was > *sorely* needed. I'm not saying the bug you reported wasn't important. > I'm saying that while you may be complaining, others are cheering. > Other bugs get fixed. See my point? > > >> >> >> Paul-6 wrote >> > I have pointed out in the past that you cannot expect a developer to >> > work on your bug, because there is nothing forcing him to work on >> > anything but what he wants to, but that doesn't mean that is all he >> > does. It means you can't *force* him to work on what *you* want him >> > to work on. I'm sure the developers *do* give careful consideration >> > to what they work on, it just might not be what you feel they >> > should work on, but they've got a bigger picture than you. >> >> First, it's not *my* bug. The bug is the software. The software is >> not mine. Second, many times I already have a solution for the >> problem. I only report it so that the bug is fixed for the benefit of >> the community. I even report bugs that don't affect me at all. > > +1 > > >> Third, "there is nothing forcing him to work on anything but what he >> wants to" is exactly the problem IMO. > > And yet that's how most of the FOSS projects work. But then again, no > system is perfect. > > >> >> >> Paul-6 wrote >> > Remember, we do have to keep the developers happy to some extent, >> > otherwise they leave. >> >> Yes, so do other people. But they are not so important, right? >> If you can't tell developers what to do, some bugs will always be >> there because they are boring to fix or because they are "not >> important". >> >> I'm suggesting that a compromise based volunteer model is applied to >> all, not just to developers. Then you might start to see a change and >> a real community ;) > > > Motivation is a hard thing to assess. Rather than reaching a > compromise in abstracto, I'd say that the compromise is found through > social engineering and everyone's motivation. Let's say that you are > reporting bugs on a regular basis. Some of these bugs are particularly > hairy ones, and it catches developers' attention. It's likely that > after two or three bug reports of that kind, developers, at least some > of them, might be paying attention. > > Yet another way to look at it is that the number of volunteers > reporting the bug or making it an issue to tackle over the various > collaborative and communication channels we have around the project. > Basically, this is an invitation to contribute and get recognized. By > contributing, you get recognized, you get bonus points, and your > credibility grows. Mind you, it works the same way for developers. And > because of that, the fact that you, a known contributor points out that > there's a leftover bugfix that may even already have a solution has > more chances to get fixed. > > Hope this helps, > > -- > Charles-H. Schulz > Co-founder, The Document Foundation, > Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin > Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts > Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint > Mobile Number: +33 (0)6 98 65 54 24. > > > -- > To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] > Problems? > http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted > -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
