Planet Maemo: category "feed:afb34818df658b05f31254de79bcc6ef"

To any of my readers who aren’t involved with Maemo, my apologies beforehand, this article might be a bit different.

Earlier today timeless pointed me to an interesting discussion regarding Mozilla’s Bugzilla, and the behaviour of specific users. Someone is simply discussing the idea of dropping support for some pretty old hardware and software (Mac OS X 10.4 in this case), when suddenly someone interjects in a pretty vocal manner; here is a small excerpt of the post in question:

“Absolutely Not. I still have two PowerPC machine That (sic) use OSX.4.11. […] As it stand now it impractical for me update either machine due to lack of funds. Maybe in 2011 I can upgrade my Laptop. But not this year . (sic) I am going to have to dip into my savings to maintain a decent amount in my Checking this year.” A bit further he continues, “You can create a one (sic) [a version of Firefox] with all the fancy new stuff. Then one for us poor people that can[‘t] drop 3k at the drop of the hat and have to hang on to older equipment out of necessity.”

(Yes, I’ve edited the piece above a bit; (sic) means that the spelling mistake existed in the original quote.)

Now, taken on its own, there really isn’t very much wrong with this post, it’s just someone displaying his discontent towards the fact he might lose his favourite browser in a couple of years; fair enough. However, it’s the way, and the details he includes that make this post so interesting. He isn’t giving a technical reason why Mozilla should keep supporting his platform; he’s providing a personal reason why he can’t buy a new computer.

You might ask yourself, “Why is this so bad, after all?” well, the reason it is so bad is because personal reasons don’t have jus civitas in technical discussions. Most Open Source communities will welcome one’s opinion, and even more contributors will defend their own opinions with all their might, all of this is based around the Roman principle of jus provocationis, which entitles any member to call upon others when he thinks a bad decision has been made. It is very important that such a right exists, as it elevates a project from being two or three people’s Sunday pet project to having a full-blown active Community, with a capital c. This being said, it doesn’t mean that because someone has a given opinion that he is therefore right.

Let’s continue with the Mozilla thread. If you’ve read the initial post that started the whole thread, you’ll note that good ol’ Josh actually quotes usage statistics, regarding how many users will be impacted (and again, this is an announcement for something which is over a year away). All of the above was just to illustrate the real point of this article.

Now, sprint one hundred thirty messages further, and the discussion has moved towards the validity of some contributor’s comments, and what impact they have. Asa Dotzler, the genius behind Firefox’s marketing in the mid-2000 responds this:

“I have spent many many hours trying to deal with people who were not adding value to bugs. Those were all hours I could have, and would have (in the old days,) spent doing other things in Bugzilla, including triage of incoming or otherwise unattended to bugs.

I have spent many many hours reading bugmail that did nothing to add value to bugs and this has resulted my not getting to bugmail that did add value to bugs that I could have or should have been dealing with.

If you don't think this is a problem, you haven't done a lot of work in Bugzilla. I haven't looked up your activity there so maybe I'm wrong, but if you asked most people that have been on this project for a few years, I'll bet they'd tell you they wasted hours and hours dealing with comments that did not move bugs forward. Some of those people might have used the time elsewhere (like with family,) but many would definitely have used the time to do other productive work actually moving bugs forward.”

Asa, sometimes I just love you. If anyone hasn’t yet caught up with the brain-machine, I’ll add some more information. Mozilla Firefox is completely free. You can download it for free, you can distribute it for free, and you can give your downloaded copies to your friends and families. If you’re passionate enough, and have the technical skill set you can even help develop the software; contribute your own time and efforts to make it better, for other people to enjoy (and inherently yourself as well).

So why do people such as the contributor at the top of this article believe they can demand anything as outrageous as “you can’t drop my platform I’m still using it?” They never paid a single cent for; they never bought a licence entitling them to any kind of rights. So where does that sense of “you-owe-me” come from?

Now, I’m not involved in Mozilla and before today hadn’t heard of Asa in literally years (the last I remember talking to him was during the launch of a specific version of Firefox, at 3AM during a very hot summer), so why do I bother talking about this when really I care about Maemo? Because we are seeing the exact same effect in our bug-tracker.

With the launch of the Nokia N900, Maemo got a boost in exposure, and that also means that a lot of non-technical people have joined in. This is not a problem by itself, considering that those people are the end users; they are the ones who buy the devices en masses and provide an incentive for manufacturers such as Nokia to create the devices in the first place. Were it not for them, I wouldn’t be here writing about Maemo in the first place. So why are they an issue? Or to put it slightly better: Are they even an issue?

The truth is, they’re not. They are a symptom, but they most definitely aren’t the issue. They are a symptom as much as Asa (and many others) spending hours and hours arguing and answering the same things over and over again is an effect of this issue.

With popularity, the type of user changes. Initially, when an Open Source project starts, you tend to have very dedicated and very committed individuals helping out. The type of help can be of different sorts; for example, GeneralAntilles in the Maemo Community has been here for quite a few years, and is highly respected by a number of people (if not the majority of the Community), however as far as I’m aware he has never contributed a single line of code to any major part of the software that constructs Maemo. Another kind of example would be wazd, who is a talented graphical artist and helps a lot of different projects come up with more interesting designs, lcuk who will spend literally years of his life working on his own project. (There’s a lot more profiles, but this isn’t about enumerating them, sorry guys)

What matters are people who are inherently productive and can provide with quantities of productive feedback. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they win all the arguments, it doesn’t mean they are always right, but at least they offer an opinion, an expertise that helps move the discussion further, rather than circling around the same tiny black hole for ages. Wasting resources is the most destructive thing on the planet, so why do so many do it furiously, and with seemingly no other purpose than to annoy or disturb?

Now, this is not to say that we should ignore and completely bypass contributors who want to report a problem in the whole system. Things can go wrong on Nokia’s end, communication can go wrong on the Community’s end, and we need to be aware of the problems in order to progress.

Where I draw the line, however, is after someone has reported an issue, three hundred people will reply “ME TOO”. How does it help? It doesn’t. It simply makes people feel a tiny bit better. Actually, scrap that, it probably doesn’t, but at least now they feel like they’ve made an ally, a friend, someone they can bond with in this very dark and dangerous place that is The Unknown. And who could blame them; we were there too, once.

This being said, there is a huge drawback to this behaviour. It tires people. Most importantly, it tires the contributors that want to help. It tugs on our passion like a heroin addict in need, ripping off some old lady’s handbag. It destroys our motivation and it creates a huge feeling of helplessness. And I’m sure Asa or GeneralAntilles must feel quite the same.

Let’s not forget that people didn’t pay for this software; be it Firefox or Maemo. I know some people will tell me I’m wrong, by saying that Mozilla gets tons of money from Google through their default search-engine selection, and that N900 owners are entitled to support because they bled out a few hundreds of <insert currency here>. You’re wrong. The software is still free. You can still go out and download it for free, you can not use Google, and you can not buy an N900; there’s alternatives. We don’t owe you anything, so stop behaving like we do.

I feel like I’m losing the thread of the thought that initially sparked this article, so I’ll try to focus on it, and spell it out:

When a project has few people, and only very strong-willed and dedicated contributors, all is well. When the project takes off, non-technical people will come along, and the tone of the discussion will change by a huge amount. Simply put, there is a lot of noise in the signal of the discussion.

The first person that reports an issue creates a very strong signal, and suddenly three hundred people add a whole lot of noise. The developers, or managers, or whomever they may be who want to get some more details or ask for the opinion for a solution can’t, because there is now so much noise that the discussion is stalled.

Now my question is: What the f do we do about it?

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