Ongoing funding of FS (Re: Innovation, funding and FS)

[Paul Boddie]

On Wednesday 19. September 2018 09.48.06 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
> Am Montag 17 September 2018 15:14:16 Paul Boddie wrote:
> >
> > at least if we can ignore those cultural issues around keeping the
> > audience happy, because a developer can potentially prioritise their work
> > appropriately and not feel that they have to dance to everybody else's
> > tune all the time.
>
> You make it sound like a bad thing, there I disagree: I believe it is good
> that it is necessary to show that work is good.

The key element is "all the time". Clearly, if the work is not "art" then it 
must be relevant to others. But people also need to be able to exercise 
discretion about how they do certain aspects of the work and the direction in 
which the work is going.

What we have seen in various Free Software projects is that the developers 
refuse to listen to the users, accusing them of not understanding "design", 
"usability", "the big picture", having "entitlement", and so on. That is not 
acceptable and has resulted in substantial dissatisfaction (and has arguably 
set Free Software adoption back by many years in certain cases).

But at the same time I recognise that the developers ought to be in a better 
position to make technical and strategic decisions and should be allowed to do 
so. There needs to be a constructive conversation between users and developers 
to allow each side to recognise and exercise their responsibilities.

Paul