RESENDING MY ORIGINAL POST TO THE LIST. This way Kevin doesn't blasted because of my comments :)
On Thursday 06 December 2007, Kevin Fries wrote: [...] | If I don't get my steak the way I ordered it. I buy my steak from | elsewhere. Ubuntu with no users, is not anything but an exercise in | ego. What the customer wants is the only real metric. You need to | understand that as a developer, and I live with that every day as a | Consultant, Designer, and Implementer. | | Which of those priorities you wish to work on, however, is completely | your own decision. But the customer MUST set the priorities of what | needs done in the bigger picture. And, the customer MUST set the list of | features that need to be implemented. I couldn't agree with you more! | Rule #1 of Business: Its not about you. Actually, this wouldn't be Rule #1, but it is pretty much the Golden Rule of Business. Mark Cuban said it best a few years back, "Treat your customers like they own you, because they do." The hard part with this though in our little neck of the woods is that all of us are also customers, so it can get confusing. | If you do not make your customers wishes and desires #1 on your priority | list, your competition will. And they are (ie. PCLinuxOS, Fedora). | Lets not forget, Ubuntu is a business product, distributed by a real | business. Therefore, its not about you... or me. Its about the | customer. Making the customer feel like they have to talk you into | something, is just not good business. This is why I spend so many hours | providing help to ANYONE who asks. Even people I would rather not. Its | not about me, its about Ubuntu, and what is best for the project. It was all fine and dandy until this paragraph. This is the one thing that really could irk a volunteer to such a project. I have been around this community for a couple of years now and talking to some past developers and contributors, the one thing that was common was that "we are working for free while they are making money from our work." I look at it like this..Kubuntu is giving me more than I could ever give it. How? 1) I have a totally free operating system 2) I don't have to worry about all the other things I would have to with that other OS 3) The development community allows me to participate in which I get to learn the ins-and-outs of what really goes on (after a while, this is a nice CV bullet point) 4) The friends I have made in the process are totally worth every minute I have put in. | Even more so in an all volunteer endeavor, egos must be checked at the | door. Developer's egos, designer's egos, and consultant's egos. We as | the people trying to make this a success, need to listen to the customer | so that there will be more of them. Its the one true advantage we have | over Microsoft which is notorious for blowing off their customer to do | what is in their best interest (Can we say Windows Genuine Advantage, or | Digital Rights Management... I knew we could). I am 50/50 on this paragraph. I wholeheartedly believe there should be the "checking the ego at the door," however a little bit of ego never hurt anybody. For instance, look at Microsoft. They have the biggest ego of all, and they have yet to really fail at what they do. Going on with Microsoft, they do indeed listen to their customers, just because we don't see it simply because we are not their customers, doesn't mean they don't. If they didn't listen, would they really be as big as they are? I mean Apple and other operating systems have been around just as long. Imagine if the Linux community would have really listened to the complaints in the 90s, I think we would then be further than we are today. In our eyes, yes we do have a true advantage over Microsoft, but to the billions of Microsoft users out there, they laugh at that advantage. | You allow the customers wishes to be the only real metric because you | place Ubuntu and Linux's needs before your own. Otherwise, are you | really helping? Very true, but one thing I have noticed from doing so is this: 1) Linux isn't gaining the ground with proprietary vendors. Why? because most distros have listened totally to the customer and have provided them with the proprietary solutions. This isn't helping in my opinion. And the one thing that really sucks with these proprietary solutions, we can't help/support the users when problems occur. The only thing we can do is say "oh well, that is what you get when using proprietary stuff, we can't help you, ask <insert proprietary mfr here>. The great thing about Linux is its scalability. It can pretty much be adapted to most environments. Providing proprietary solutions to the end user isn't doing anything for the cause, and is actually making us look like another Microsoft. We are starting to provide some of the same proprietary solutions (mainly drivers and codecs) to make the customer happy, and by doing this the majority of distro developers aren't aiming their efforts in helping the advancement of free solutions. I can go on about this forever. You are right when you say the customer is #1, and this is of course, like I said, the golden rule of business, a money making business. The tide is different when a great majority of your workers are providing their time, knowledge, and everything else for absolutely free (there are the exceptions of course, people like me who enjoy the freeness I have by using a free operating system). A month or so back Scott and I had a similar conversation in IRC and I was upset about it, but after sitting back and thinking about it, I can see his point and understand it. We all have our egos and that's what makes all of us unique. We are all customers of our own creations, so making us happy should also be an important rule. If we aren't happy, then nobody will be happy. So unlike a typical business, their has to be some give-and-take with the free software community, at least a happy medium. So far it has worked for Ubuntu as well as many other distrobutions. Scott, I do have a problem with the document you linked to about asking smart questions. Most of the answers I have seen in there are stupid answers or stupid solutions. I was always raised with the idea that there isn't a such thing as a stupid question, and I believe that. Just because most of us know to Google this or that, or know how to find solutions, that doesn't mean that every Tom, Dick, and Harry does. I have a professor who has multiple degrees (Bachelors (couple of them), Masters (up there with those too), and PhDs), yet he asks his students for help researching information online because he isn't as savvy as some of the students, that doesn't make any of his questions stupid. I say burn that smart questions document, as it is obviously from the 90s with the "STFW" and "RTFM" type assessments. Its a miracle that the community has survived through all of that stuff and not driven more people away. OK, </end here> :) -- Richard A. Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG Key: 0x2E2C0124
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