Lost a new commercial user this week :(

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 18:42:17 UTC, Joseph Rushton 
Wakeling wrote:
> On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 15:34:44 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> This is widely advertised statement I can't agree with. For me 
>> goal is having working language that works. Getting users is 
>> indirect way to achieve that by attracting more contributions 
>> but user just by itself has not value to _me_.
>
> An indirect benefit is still a benefit -- as I said in my 
> previous post, these things aren't a zero-sum game.  Among 
> other things, more users means not only the likelihood of more 
> contributions, but also more bugs and points of failure 
> identified, more experienced people to use as a sounding board 
> for ideas, more people to call on for help when you have a 
> problem, and so on.

It also means more people asking for stuff, then doing nothing to 
contribute towards it, as though the D community is their slave 
labor.  Not saying this about Manu, just that there are people 
with weird expectations of open source.

> I guess what I'd say is that, yes, I get how the idealistic and 
> inspirational stuff can be irritating and feel like delusion, 
> but it can be a pretty powerful tool to help facilitate the 
> process of cooperation between different people who do indeed 
> all have different itches to scratch.  Being "nice" isn't just 
> a matter of being liked or not (not the most important thing in 
> the world); it's a really handy means of minimizing the amount 
> of unnecessary friction in a community.  It doesn't need to 
> involve any rose-tinted spectacles or illusions about people's 
> motivations, just a recognition of what is going to help 
> promote positive or negative reactions from other people.

I'll add that a majority of contributors do not solely scratch 
their own itches, but contribute in other ways that do not 
directly benefit them.  Maybe that's because there are indirect 
benefits to having better docs, or they just become invested in 
the project over time.  Very few operate solely from 
self-interest, though most probably contribute a majority of 
their work for that reason.