mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Jack Zhang <address@hidden>]

It is very interesting to see that some of my msgs becomes one of
trigger of this topic.

Could we return back to the starting point of this discussion. The
real trigger of this talk is indeed from the comment from Dan, on this
msg, he complained for donation from our individual user.

It seems we did not mention anything about the developing the
wintexmacs stuff. I believe most of new comers have faced the similar
problem without any clear guidance which means a couple of days time
wasted.

I don't know what is the culture on this community at all. But we
never think us as customer, we are users. We enjoy the benefit of
using your stuff and we also report some problems to you helping you
improve your product and propaganda your products. That is our
contribution to this community though it is a very little.

Do you require any user should be a serious developer to your stuff if
they are reporting any bug? BTW, the problem we reported is very basic
and fundamental, any mature product should not have such problem at
all.

I am disappointed by some negative comment from some members of this
developing team. What is your community culture? Open and fair and
respect?

Regards

Jack





On 29/11/05, Henri Lesourd <address@hidden> wrote:
>  >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
>
>


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