[linux-audio-user] Re: Linux Audio Direction - Linux-audio-user

2 Aug 2005

Mark Constable:
...
  On Monday 01 August 2005 23:20, Kjetil Svalastog
Matheussen
 &lt;k.s.matheussen(a)notam02.no&gt; wrote:
   You make
it sound like a one way street all about the developer(s).
 A "project" cannot survive without users. If users do not use the
 software the developers are sweating over then that software project
 will go nowhere and die. Every bit as much as us users leach the
 efforts of developers is the developers need us as users or else
 their efforts will come to nothing... they also need to pay homage
 to their userbase... or another project, that does so, will succeed
 in the long term and their baby will not. 
 Extremely provocating rubbush! 
 I am talking about "projects" that both developers and users happen
 to be associated with. I don't see what's provocative or in anyway
 rubbishy about a statement like "a project cannot survive without
 users".

 If you develop software for your own needs then great, if some other
 people also happen to use it then power be to your software... but I
 hardly see how that software compares to major core code that the
 rest of us totaly rely on... like the kernel, ALSA/JACK, X/desktops.

  In addtition to general generalisation, you make
programmers seem like
 some mindless robots slaving for their users. Personally, I don't care
 very much whether my software is used. That does not matter. Its the fun
 of making new types of software, and that I need the software myself. If
 others like the software too, thats great!, but its normally not of very
 much importance for whether I keep developing or not. 
 And so goes your project(s). I wasn't talking about the kind of project
 where someone like yourself does not care if anyone else uses your
 sofware... that is not the backbone of the larger and really important
 major projects we all absolutely depend on.

 I'm talking about the survival, or not, of core projects that, if
 successful, will be used by many MILLIONs of users in the next decade.
 Some of the software we use today will become major international
 institutions over the next 5 to 10 years... and I'm very sure the
 current progeny that evolves and survives the next few years will be
 the ones that are most end-user friendly.

Okey, with those clarifications, I can to a certain degree agree with you.
But I will also add that your tone about users and developers where
provocating, which led me to write what I wrote. Some peope are
pure developers, but most of us use our own software as well, and
even for core-projects, the reasons for devloping are probably quite
diverse.

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