Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> writes:

> It's exactly this "we don't want to even discuss the possibility that
> our program isn't perfect, because it's free and you're an ungrateful
> ass for thinking a new user's perspective might be an interesting input
> to the design process" that keeps me from contributing more to open
> source.

Heh Heh. I was just browsing the web site for pyjamas - a Python to
JavaScript compiler. The guy running the project is incredibly
guberdefensive about all the design decisions. Any possible criticism
is responded to with something along the lines of:

"Yes? And where's your bug report? Where's your patch? You want better
support? Pay someone!"

(Even to simple comments like "Output did not work on Opera").

Now if he'd clearly just said that the goal of the software is X, and it
is not suitable for using it for Y, then he wouldn't get half of the
questions/complaints he gets. And when people have legitimate
complaints, if he instead used one of the numerous means of trying to
get volunteers to work on it, rather than demanding that the complainant
works on it, the project would get more love.

To be fair, he does state explicitly that the goal is to serve the
individual developers' needs, and not the users. At least he is honest.

I'm betting he'll come here to respond ;-)

But yeah, even though you misread what Warp was saying, I agree with
you. When a lead developer has that attitude, he/she might as well say:
"Look, if you want to help, understand that you'll be dealing with
jerks. You've got to really *want* to help us!"

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