On Monday 05 July 2010 08:52:14 Marcus Moeller wrote:
Dear Uwe,
On Sunday 04 July 2010 18:54:52 Marcus Moeller wrote:
I think your summary is very good. I personally don't like the word 'user' at all because for me a user is similar to 'consumer' or 'lurker' and is no win for the project at all.
But we do all that for the users. Users are the reason why the project exists at all.
Sorry, this is not how the open source ecosystem works. Your perspective is the classic business model view (and which is how SUSE has been delivered for quite a long time).
What is the benefit for the project of attracting users (besides telling them they should contribute if they use Open Source). It's a give and take, you cannot survive only by giving (unless you're earning money with). I even can't agree with Andreas that users give us acknowledgement as this is really worthless.
An I can't repeat it as often: it's really easy to contribute and everybody should be able to. You are contributing if you report a bug, send feedback, and track the responses, too.
Now you simply move the point at which you say somebody is contributing. A happy user who tells her neighbour about openSUSE/linux is a contributor? If you go that far, pretty much everyone who installes openSUSE themselves is probably a contibutor - only 'corporate' users are not (but their company is paying for the product anyway). So at that point we're back at getting as many users as possible... (which I think is great, btw) Users bring mindshare, tell others about openSUSE, give us leverage with big companies (hard- but also software and service companies), give the companies in the openSUSE ecosystem more opportunity to make money (!good for us!) and yes, some might actively contribute at some point. And anyone NOT using MS Windows or Mac OS X is a Saved Soul ;-) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org