One of the great things about Free and Open Source software is the availability of the developers. On three occasions recently I have contacted the developer of an application and had a favourable communication with them.
Of course I am not suggesting everyone starts emailing the developers of software and asks them questions! I use bug trackers and mailing lists normally. It’s just that I happened to be talking to these people and they offered help with the applications I had problems with.
How often in the closed source world do you get to talk directly to the developers of the applications you use on a daily basis. I know that when I used windows, most of the developers I contacted “hid” behind “support@” email addresses, never making themselves easily contactable, never allowing the great unwashed (me) to enter into the inner sanctum of the development team.
I can understand a certain level of abstraction between the end user and the developer, they have lives after all, and many make their money out of support. It’s very refreshing though to be able to talk to someone about the issues with their product, and come out of it feeling like they listened, and wanted to help.
I like that.
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The key feature here is that open source, through its very nature, scales quite naturally.
As a project grows it attracts more developers, more contributions to its mailing lists etc etc. Which means more people to answer users questions. The result is the quality of help that is available is generally vastly superior to that available for closed source products.
Closed source products are invariably victims of their own success in this respect. Once a product has a large number of users supporting that product becomes a significant burden on the company. Since the source code is closed, others cannot provide assistance with support (and development).
Contrast with open source where if a user needs something badly enough in a product they can write it themselves.
There is such a natural balance in the open source world: if enough users want a feature, someone will write it. If there is enough demand for support and someone spots that demand they can provide it (and earn a living from it). If the number of active developers drops or the number of users helping others drops then this will tend to reduce the number of users to a level that the project can support.
It’s true. Not only that, but how many Windows applications allow you to submit suggestions for fixes and upgrades, and show you transparently that they are doing it whilst still allowing you to suggest improvements. In that way everyone gets to be part of the product testing and development team!
Of course, you could try having a wash. That might help.
You don’t come up and see me any more Tony? I miss you.
One of my main arguments for open source in fact