Open Source sustainability

So use users of software may wish to reflect on some thoughts about sustainability
.

Seems like RISC OS is not the only open source OS or software project that has issues.

I note the comment in the article:

“they contribute because it’s fun, but also acknowledged that some aspects of open source development can make it decidedly “un-fun” (e.g., demanding users who complain about missing features or existing bugs but don’t contribute code or fixes)."

Sound familar?

demanding users who complain about missing features or existing bugs but don’t contribute code or fixes

The problem with this is that if bug reports and feature requests are only welcomed from people who’ve contributed code themselves, it becomes an operating system for programmers, by programmers, and everyone else can go jump :(

who complain about missing features or existing bugs but don’t contribute code or fixes

Clearly written by people who fail to understand that “users” don’t necessary have the time, ability, understanding, or confidence to start messing around in the code in order to fix stuff.

Agree but users can help in some ways by minimising time expended looking at issues by providing information or helping out on other things like documentation etc thus lessening the load.

The other thing is about expectations and if you are running alpha/beta code then expect issues or indeed offer to run alpha/beta code to test it.

I guess the main thing is that resource is constrained even in some of the bigger Open Source projects let alone within our community.

The problem with this is that if bug reports and feature requests are only welcomed from people who’ve contributed code themselves, it becomes an operating system for programmers, by programmers, and everyone else can go jump

I’m not sure that’s quite what was said, though.

Bug reports and feature requests are always welcome, and will go into the to-do pile.

However, “demanding users who complain about missing features or existing bugs but don’t contribute code or fixes” are something else. RISC OS still has a few of these, and over the years a couple of individuals have resulted in my parking development of some applications to the detriment of all users.

There’s a world of difference between “Hi, it would be great if…” or “Hi, did you know that if I do … then … falls over?”, and repeated negativity (often in public forums like the newsgroups) about software written for fun in people’s spare time and made available for free.

The other thing is about expectations and if you are running alpha/beta code then expect issues or indeed offer to run alpha/beta code to test it.

Oh, I’d forgotten that one.

“Your software falls over when I do … .”

“I can’t reproduce that. Could you just try to do … and let me know what happens?”

“No.”

There are at least a couple of CashBook tickets still open which end in that way.

“I can’t reproduce that. Could you just try to do … and let me know what happens?”

“No.”

Now that’s out of order. If I got a response like that I’d try and produce a repeatable error scenario ASAP.

I vaguely recall doing that a while back where I read the initial bug report here and tried variants of the written description to trigger the problem – cut and paste stuff with writable icons IIRC. My time invested may have saved that amount or more of the developer time.

“No.”

Yup. Somebody (not a regular around here) seemed to have no problem slagging me off for a problem with one of my programs on a system I don’t have (the other branch). I offered a debug build with logging and stuff to try to figure out what was going wrong to get it fixed.
They weren’t interested “in wasting any more of my precious time on this crap”.

That’s why my official stance is “only RISC OS 5 is supported”. I do actually try to make most of my stuff work on 3.7 via emulation (my virus game needed a fair amount of work to do that!), but if stuff misbehaves on setups that I don’t have, whether or not it ever gets fixed depends upon the user as well as me. If they aren’t interested, there’s not much I can do. If they’re outright rude, then I have no interest in wasting my precious time trying to work out what went wrong.

That, I guess, is one of the downsides of Web 2.0. It’s just so easy to insult people’s work from the anonymity of their randomly named user profile…

demanding users who complain about missing features or existing bugs but don’t contribute code or fixes

…is there a place/OS/Forum/blog without those people? I am actually collecting all these “ungrateful users” comments, messages etc. in a book I am writing to be published after my retirement :D

@ Doug

Seems like RISC OS is not the only open source OS or software project that has issues.

First of all thanks for sharing this! Sustainability, my main concern about RISC OS (and I think I’ve bothered everyone enough on the ROUGOL latest meetings about it loool, apologies if so!).

IMHO To help the OS to improve its sustainability it is unavoidable that sooner or later the community will have to come up with strategies to create (or join) some realistic markets for the OS (the famous question: where is the money in this or that direction?).

The “for fun”, “in spare time” can only do a certain amount of work. For example, Linux focused on the Servers market in order to have companies producing software and fixes for the OS itself and that worked. Companies use Linux to build their own products (this costs them much less than paying M$ fees and, at the same time, they can fix issues they find along the way). This is also why Linux struggles so much as a Desktop OS (simply not enough effort/desire to make it happen).

The retro market for RISC OS is a bit marginal really. This is because RISC OS never really reached the same amount of games other platforms reached and because (well let’s face it) it was a world for people with more money to spend on the Hardware. That means less people are nostalgic about it than let’s say the ZX Spectrum.

So my question to everyone is, given your personal experience and needs (please without arguing with each-other lol), what do you honestly think could be a market for RISC OS that would improve it’s sustainability? (and why possibly)

IMHO To help the OS to improve its sustainability it is unavoidable that sooner or later the community will have to come up with strategies to create (or join) some realistic markets for the OS (the famous question: where is the money in this or that direction?).

RISC OS currently doesn’t have any unique selling points (USP). I have to admit that if I were smart enough to develop an application or solution that was strong enough to drive people to RISC OS, I still wouldn’t write it for RISC OS. I would write it for another platform, so I didn’t have to get people to buy into RISC OS as well as my solution ¹, other platforms with hundreds of millions to billions of users would be a sensible market.

The “for fun”, “in spare time” can only do a certain amount of work.

Honestly I think that is all that is left. The commercial realities of the platform have reached a point where the largest source of income for development is straight up just ‘asking for cash’ like a charity. There’s not enough money floating around to pay full time employees.

1998 Acorn demonstrated that there wasn’t market for their products and OS employing 50+ people in RISC OS work.
2000 Risc OS Ltd demonstrated there wasn’t enough money selling OS upgrades to existing users to keep 4 people employed.
2010 Risc Os Ltd demonstrated there wasn’t enough money from a yearly subscription scheme to existing users to keep 2 people employed.
2010+ Risc OS Open Ltd demonstrated that there wasn’t actually a market out there for selling consultancy services to companies making bespoke RISC OS based solutions.

If a massive new userbase could be found with associated cash it’s still not going to overcome the fundamental RISC OS problems of robustness, security, portability and features. It is 2020 and undoing 36 years of under-investment in the OS isn’t going to happen in the short, medium or long term.

The retro market for RISC OS is a bit marginal really. This is because RISC OS never really reached the same amount of games other platforms reached and because (well let’s face it) it was a world for people with more money to spend on the Hardware. That means less people are nostalgic about it than let’s say the ZX Spectrum.

RISC OS 5OpenDirectCloverleaf is a terrible retro platform as it doesn’t run the vast majority of old RISC OS games and software.

So my question to everyone is, given your personal experience and needs (please without arguing with each-other lol), what do you honestly think could be a market for RISC OS that would improve it’s sustainability? (and why possibly)

You ask for honesty so …

I think the biggest problem here ² is that it does not actually matter. Imagine if all RISC OS activity stopped right now, no new OS versions, no new software or hardware, no updates, no user-groups, no shows, no magazines etc. It would be sad, but it would not massively negatively impact anyone ³. People would still use RISC OS for the things that it could do, and other platforms for the rest, just as they do now. The thing I would miss the most is the people I had met through the platform rather than a potential future.

¹ The Sibelius option.
² I like to call this elephant in the room ‘Werklikheid’.
³ There are about 2-3 people left who might make a significant portion of their income from RISC OS activity. But if they don’t have a bail out plan after 20+ years of shrinking market, then I think that is their problem.

RISC OS 5OpenDirectCloverleaf is a terrible retro platform as it doesn’t run the vast majority of old RISC OS games and software.

I’m not sure about that one. I don’t, and never did, do games so relative numbers of “workers” vs. “duds” is something I don’t know but Jon Abbott seems to have a wide portfolio of workers.

Other software – it’s interesting to note that many items just work and that of the others the failure is usually just one module that is 26 bit.

Whether there is enough user interest to maintain things is a different issue.