Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Re: Plan, then communicate (no-list)

[Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org>]

On 13:48 Wed 23 Jan     , Steve Long wrote:
> Richard Freeman wrote:
> > True.  I think one of the underlying issues in this mess though is "who
> > is the customer?"
> >
> I accept your points, but a distro's customers are its end-users. Simple.
> Doesn't matter if some of them happen to be devs or power-users or
> developers from other projects or a total newb. They are Gentoo's
> customers.
> 
> The same applies to any software-project. If you don't look after your
> users, you don't get paid (in the real world.) Without users Gentoo will
> wither eventually. No real glory in working on a project no-one uses (even
> if you and your mates think it's great and continue to use it; where will
> you get new devs from when the others get a real job?)

Users come naturally once you've got a great product, which comes 
naturally once you've got great developers. The motivation of developers 
to create such a product exists before there are users, and studies of 
OSS projects have shown that it's rarely that a developer's intrinsic 
motivation is to get users.

New users may be drawn by the userbase (the community aspect) in 
addition to the product. New developers are drawn by the product or by 
the existing developers. Since new developers generally come from the 
user base, there would be some decline, but I suspect smaller than you 
would think.

Thanks,
Donnie
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