El dom, 14-02-2016 a las 02:36 -0500, Martin Owens escribió:
Dear Gez,
On Sun, 2016-02-14 at 03:01 -0300, Gez wrote:
Now, I'm well aware that it's difficult to produce high quality software when the resources are limited so I'm not expecting magic here. I know that using free software from a project run by volunteers will require making some sacrifices and lowering the expectations a bit, and as a users who runs his design firm with free software exclusively I know I have.
Conversely users have a responsibility to invest in the project too. Part of what I'm trying to communicate is that there must be space for developers to not be charity volunteers and space for users to be more than freeloaders. There is plenty of responsibility for everyone :-D
Martin,
Sure, and that was the spirit of my e-mail. Sorry if it wasn't clear.
I've been involved with Inkscape and other free software projects for years, and although I haven't been contributing too much during the past two years, in previous years I did quite a lot. For some stret cred, I used to have the top karma in the bug team for a while, answered a lot of questions at the Q&A section at launchpad, helped Jesusda with icon work, and did other stuff too (the pixmaps for many of the tool pointer icons were re-drawn by me, and the no-image image is also my contribution). I'm not a developer, I'm not a top contributor but I'm far from being an uninvolved user. I use 100% free software because I believe in it, but it's time to star ttalking about what doesn't work and maybe do something about it.
I wanted to contrast the idea of "programming should be fun" with the idea of "using the software should be fun too". We have to erradicate knee-jerk reactions like "patches are welcome" when a user comes with a valid request about something tha hinders her ability to do work. It's not fun when you can't do your work, it's not fun when you get dismissed when you report it.
I appreciate your work because it's clear you're trying to address these kind of problems free software projects have, with a realistic and pragmatic mindset. In theory, free software empowers its users giving them the chance to inspect and modify the code when they have a need. But in reality becoming a capable coder to address anything more complicated than a really low-hanging fruit requires some proficiency that nobody who isn't a programmer has. And becoming a programmer with the ability to understand the code and modify it without completely screwing it up is something that is rather a full time job. I'm a graphic designer. I have some basic grasp of programming that I've been trying to improve, but the truth is that if I want to fix anything that really prevents me from getting my graphic design work done with inkscape, I should stop being a graphic designer and become a software developer. And that's not something you can do during weekends.
I'd love to have the time and the energy but I'd be lying if I say I can. However, I can contribute with my knowledge and experience in graphic design and design-oriented workflows. I'm an experienced user, and I'm probably the kind of users a graphics software project should be targetting if they care about going "pro" and producing a powerful program with a high quality output. I'm actually using the program everyday to do my professional work. Work that pays the bills, but also leaves happy clients passing the test of being sent to offset presses, being broadcast on TV and published on different outputs.
I'm more than available for consulting. And that's also a non-paid work that takes time that I'm willing to do to help inkscape. Of course, coming from a user in the meritocratic culture of software development it sounds like just a user demanding free stuff. And in my opinion, that's something we have to review too, the role of users in free software projects, not as a burden but as a source of experience and expertise that can be used to improve the software.
So I really dig your idea of re-defining free software communities allowing new roles and kinds of users and developers.
Gez.