From: Anton Oleynikov <len0x_at_mail.ru>
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 11:44:11 -0000

> I don't see how this is relevant. Users are most often not
> skilled nor trained
> to make educated decisions on how the software should be done
> or work. They
> whine and request, sure, but we must take decisions on how
> the software should
> work because we see things in a wider perspective. At least
> we should, IMHO.

I see that you're not working in the software industry. If I told my
customers that they are " not skilled nor trained to make educated decisions

on how the software should be done or work" they would laugh in my face! :)
Users are not all that different apart from they haven't paid us and
therefore
we don't have to implement stuff for them (not because we don't want to, but
because simply we don't have to and can use the time doing something else
instead).

Let me tell you what I enjoy in OS projects: making users happy. I'm
probably
one of the most selfless ppl in that respect. For instance I'm working on
radio
screen at the moment even though I never used radio and not planning to.
(same goes for folder skip functionality on the main unit).
I also enjoy being active member of the forum community because it gives
users felling that you actually give a damn about what they want and they
appreciate that.

Having said that I agree that wider perspective is important, but mainly
when it comes to consistent behaviour and general source code structure.
But if we start discussing things like: what should be default behaviour,
how
should we phrase it, what icon should we use etc. - then I think we should
leave it to the end user because we're doing it for him...
 
> Seriously. You think every single developer should just
> commit whatever they
> think is "right" without discussing it with the rest?

No, if I was committing serious change I would have posted here first.
In the end - we're having a dicussion now and its not really a big deal to
rollback the change (and I will have no problem with that). But there has to
be
a good reason for that (which I couldn't imagine before and therefore
committed in
the first place).
 
> No, it is not shaking. I'm stating my opinions and I do
> believe that this
> particular thing (from where you extracted that quote) is a
> mess and I am very firmly against it.

Sure, but unlike Linus you didn't really explained why...

> You are entitled to consider my opinions wrong, bad or
> totally crazy. They're still mine.

I respect that. But I just wanted to know if we can do things that not
everyone agrees with.
The total number of developers is quite high, so always there bound to be
someone who
doesn't agree. What do we do then?

Best wishes,
Anton.
Received on 2005-11-04