Lost a new commercial user this week :(

[Manu via Digitalmars-d]

On 30 December 2014 at 04:08, Gary Willoughby via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 16:33:05 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>
>> I don't think it needs to be a zero-sum game.  Removing blockers to entry
>> can make an orders-of-magnitude difference in the number of users for a
>> particular platform, and when you gain users, you gain developers.  Paying
>> now to remove basic usability issues could well free up a lot of core
>> contributor time in future, by opening a door for Windows devs that makes it
>> worth their while to invest effort into the language and its toolchain.
>
>
> Yes, this is how i see things.

I think this is the most important point I (tried) to make; users are
only likely to contribute once they already have _significant_
investment.
First-impressions matter, a lot, and it has been my experience that
many (most?) users I have introduced to D (mainly from my own
industry) have been scared off by first-impressions, relating to the
points I've discussed.

Business commitment is even more significant than user commitment,
since if a business becomes committed and there is a block in the way,
something that needs to be fixed and nobody else is available to do
it, there is a heightened probability they will assign someone paid
working time to address the issue. Support for existing commitments is
not usually negotiable.
As such, I think commercial users are quite important, and perhaps
even in the traditional open-source sense that it may actually lead to
things being done.
Of course, businesses are more conservative than users, and will never
make a company commitment if the experience appears shaky right out of
the gate. Those first(/early) impressions really matter!