mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Henri Lesourd <address@hidden>]

>Jack Zhang wrote:
>I think the first impression of new user for any application system is
>very crucial. You should not expect the user is happy to stay with you
>and reluctant to spend a lot of time on your system after very
>disapointmenting attempts only for the simple installation.
>
You are indeed right, what you say *is* interesting and
important

> For the marketing point of view, I strongly recommend developing team
> to improve their installation package and improve the contents of the
> software's manual and FAQ.
... but I just feel that if "marketing", "business", etc.
are interesting things by themselves, directly borrowing
concepts (and attitudes) from here is probably not the
best thing to do.

I mean : a free software project is *not* a business
project, *nor* it is a corporation ; thus we cannot
behave *as if* it were the case, build reasonings
*as if* a business plan was going on, etc., because
it completely ignores reality, it would just don't
work, this way.

Instead, although in itself, it doesn't automagically
solves the problems, it is probably better to
start from the real starting point of free software
projects : an accurate description would be that
such a project is a group of people that work together,
primarily to build an evolve a *technical* object,
namely, a software.


>Andrey G. Grozin wrote:
>I see a curious difference in attitude between Linux
>and Windows users of TeXmacs. When Linux users discover
>a problem, they usually send a patch to fix it (though
>not always). When Windows users discover a problem,
>they want somebody to solve it. And there is exactly
>one developer of the Windows port, Dan Martens (many
>thanks, though I don't use Windows).
>
>I think the community users of the Windows port
>of GNU TeXmacs should help themselves, like Linux
>users do.
>
I strongly agree with you here, it seems to
me that it is definitely the case that lots
of misunderstandings stem from the fact that
users of commercial software are "educated"
to behave as **customers**.

But in a free software project, most of
the time, there is no such thing as this
strong, excessive divide between "customers"
and "producers". Instead, there are of course
users and developers, but in essence, all
the participants are contributing users
that choose to contribute more or less.

This is here that the cultural gap really is.

Best, Henri