Is it irrelevant what users of FOSS think? (Re: Fedora Present and Future: a Fedora.next 2014 Update (Part I, "Why?"))

[Matthew Miller]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 08:34:55PM +0100, lee wrote:
> I`m somewhat surprised that the feeling of apparent desinterest of the
> makers of Fedora in what its users think seems kinda widespread under
> its users.  Perhaps it`s a wrong impression; if not, it may be something
> for Fedora.next to address.

I think it's unfair impression. Some of the developers only care about their
own area, and perhaps the users of that thing but not the project overall,
sure. But overall, we care very much.

The catch is: it's hard to get a good sense of what the userbase as a whole
thinks. It's easy to conflate that with "care about what some users are
repeating very loudly on a mailing list". That's certainly _some_ input, but
it's a skewed view of the actual world.

Many of the better possible ways to measure are very expensive, but overall,
there is one which is straightforward and effective: users who represent a
large enough community will have some percentage of people willing and able
to contribute by becoming Fedora developers, and those people guide the
project through their actions. That's why we have Gnome, KDE, LXDE, and
MATE-Compiz desktop spins -- and, pointedly, not a fvwm one. If you really
think that this is the best course for Fedora, I encourage you to step up
and create one. (See <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Spins_Process>.)


Or, if that's not really you're thing, you could step back and focus on what
you are suggesting is a bigger problem -- getting user input into Fedora.
How could that be done better? Surveys? More user testing? An active "User
Feedback SIG"?

-- 
Matthew Miller    --   Fedora Project    --    <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>