
Do Open Source Software Developers Listen to Their Users? - ingve
http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.06893
======
ChikkaChiChi
They got responses to 5 questions from 72 OSS developers with projects on
SourceForge. There is absolutely no way you can draw any sort of reasonable
conclusion from that sample.

~~~
afarrell
That is a good point. Projects that are on sourceforge are going to select for
less recently created projects and projects less likely to migrate to a
platform with better developer experience.

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afarrell
One bit of nuance to this is how one defines "users". An existing open source
project (or even perhaps an exiting proprietary product) is likely to think of
its users as "those people who currently use the product", while a startup
building a product to be sold to a future larger userbase is going to think of
them more broadly. The problem with this is that the former is subject to
selection bias. All the people who are currently using the product are by
selection, those who have the patience to deal with its' usability warts.

Therefore, if an outsider to a project wants to make a change in favor of
usability, they have a much harder time overcoming the objection that changing
the code might break things.

The same is true on a second level: All of the existing developers of a
project are those who are by selection already comfortable with both the
development process and the resulting product. If someone wants to join, they
have to already be familiar with how the project is structured and how it does
things. They probably have to already be comfortable with this. Someone who
hates working on projects without automated testing is very unlikely to join
such a project and then convince the team to adopt automated testing.

Of course, you can't just let random new people come into a project without
pushing back on them; Often their ideas are genuinely bad ideas which come
from a lack of understanding & context.

~~~
ploxiln
You also can't just join a commercial software project. But you can fork an
open source one.

For most open source software projects, the "user base" is developers who like
open source software. That's a good thing really; otherwise, there would be
nothing that works well for people like me, as all commercial software
companies go after the much bigger markets.

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infinity0
As a FOSS developer, my aim is to grow the FOSS community _in the long term_.
Number of users, and their real or perceived wants, is only sometimes helpful
to this goal. Sometimes it is not, for example when "shiny" is prioritised
over solid engineering or security, or when a short-term attention gain from
temporary "hired guns" is prioritised over attracting reliable and skilled
workers that will help to sustain the community.

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Maultasche
I think that this is a complicated question for two reasons.

1\. It probably greatly depends on the open source project. Some developers
are probably in tune with their users while other barely realize that users
exist.

2\. Some people have a different definition of "listening to their users" than
others.

Users who want something but don't get it may regard the developer as not
listening to them.

The developer, on the other hand, may be hearing everything users are asking
for, but aren't implementing everything that's requested because it isn't
practical or just doesn't fit in with the scope and future plans for the
project.

A developer can't just throw in everything that users want because the result
may be a horrible mess. So even if the developer listens to what users are
saying and directs the project in a way that makes sense from a long-term
perspective, many users may feel like the developer isn't listening to them.

That's really a communications issue. If the developer simply ignores requests
because they don't make sense (or makes hostile responses), they're more
likely to be regarded as not listening.

If their responses are respectful and they post information about their design
decisions and how they are implementing certain requested features and why,
then they're a lot more likely to be perceived as listening to their users.

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LordKano
The only time I ever attempted to engage with the developers of an open source
project, the answer was a resounding "NO".

~~~
talmand
"Contribute or shut up" seems to be a common response.

My experience, not extensive mind you, is mixed on the matter. The people who
make the communication positive gets my attention, even if they so no.
Otherwise, I'll still possibly use the project as needed but I don't feel the
need to contribute even if I could.

~~~
agibsonccc
I think it depends on the project. I get a ton of feature requests that are
off the beaten trail. I basically give people the feed back of: We have
limited bandwidth, but I'm happy to point you in the right direction.

"Contribute or shut up" worded differently may not be an ideal answer but it's
an understandable one. Imagine if you were a resource constrained engineer
having hundreds of queries and emails a day about certain things users want
and then not only have that feature not be something of interest to anyone but
that user but also have it be something that isn't even on your road map.

Technology that's general purpose enough (in our case machin e
learning/scientific computing) will give you this.

There's a huge delta between say: a resource constrained but heavily used
project and a javascript lib that only provides a slightly better basic
widget.

It's no excuse for OSS devs to be rude but I hope you can understand what it
looks like from our side a bit.

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jmnicolas
Right now the only example of big changes asked by users I can come with is
Gnome 3 ... you can guess what would be my answer to the question in the title
;-)

~~~
phkahler
>> Gnome 3

Hey, we think hot corners are cool because they're easy to hit with a mouse -
never mind that we're moving to more of a touch friendly interface.

And speaking of touch interfaces, isn't it cool using swipe-to-unlock with a
mouse? Users like that!

Oh, we abandoned the old HIG. I mean who needs UI guidelines? Why would users
want an icon labeled "email" and not the name of the program?

===== They have some things really right and some just so wrong. And from what
I've read they don't listen as if they have a coherent plan, but it's not
really making sense to me what that plan is.

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afarrell
> According to the results, majority of OSS developers neither consider
> usability as their top priority nor do they consult usability experts.

A rigorous examination of thing's which most people consider to be obvious is
still valuable.

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vonnik
I'm part of two open-source frameworks --
[http://deeplearning4j.org](http://deeplearning4j.org) and
[http://nd4j.org](http://nd4j.org) \-- and I can tell you that we spend about
half our time listening to users, fixing bugs they report, adding features
they request and improving the docs. It really helps when other users kick in
to help.

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thawkins
Smart, interesting new functionality that is made inaccessible due to poor
usability is about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

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harlowja
I try to (and I work in 5+ opensource projects/libraries).

It's a two-way street here, the users need to also listen and engage with the
developers. So don't forget that to, opensource people (especially if they are
doing it in there spare/free-time) require working with, not being dictated to
;)

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baseballmerpeak
Unless it is directly related to functionality, no.

