Re: User vs Developer: Round 2 (and half-time?)

[David Kastrup]

Xavier Scheuer <address@hidden> writes:

> Dear Graham, dear Developers,
>
>>  I did not crawl out of my mother's womb knowing about lilypond
>> internals, or even about programming at all.  Any knowledge I have
>> was from hard work: reading source code, reading public emails on
>> the list archives, and learning about programming in general.  I
>> am a bit dissapointed that *you* have not done that.
>
> Please do not consider users as "under men".

It would only be "under men" who would bother learning to work on
LilyPond?

> Yes I am a "simple user", not developing, programming and doing all
> this hard work.  I admit I have currently higher priorities than
> learning Scheme, C++, etc.  I *use* LilyPond, I try to help in a
> certain way (see below), I promote LilyPond around me and make scores
> for my university orchestra using LilyPond.  I do not pretend to the
> title of "Lead Developer", "Release Meister" or whatever.

Titles like that are "pretensions"?  I thought they were task
descriptions.  It means you'll get a kick in the rear when you don't
meet the task description.  But you have the privilege of getting that
kick delivered royally, by Graham himself.

> If we report issues, regressions and make new features requests, it is
> not simply because we wallow in "keep on whining" or because we take a
> sadistic pleasure in giving some more work to the developers.

We were talking about a "I am disappointed that you developers don't
drop whatever you are doing at the moment and do the whole work for the
task a certain user has set his fancy to" situation.

And no, there is no reason for that expectation, not even if you had
frequent prior success with it.  And most certainly not for that
attitude.

It would be different if the user had paid for support or development,
or was tackling a long-standing problem developers wanted to see done.
That seriously improves your odds, or even your evens.

> Yesterday I posted several messages on different LilyPond mailing
> lists.  I replied to some users' questions/issues, I reported a
> regression bug "type-critical" and… I started a fight with Graham!

Congratulations.  Fixing a regression bug "type-critical" and ending a
fight with Graham would be better, but one has to start somewhere.

> I received at the same time thanks you from users (in English and
> French) and infuriation from devel.  I received also acknowledgements
> and congratulations about the quality of the score I made with
> LilyPond from musicians of my orchestra.

Guess what?  I don't get thank you from users.  I rarely get thank yous
from developers.  I don't have time to create scores over all the work I
do _on_ LilyPond rather than _with_ LilyPond.  I get no acknowledgements
and congratulations about the code I write.

So I have a hard time not characterizing the way in which you try others
in getting to do more work for whatever good purpose similar as Graham
does.  Whining.

With your scores, you reap what you sow.  I am so busy spreading manure
on your fields that I don't get to sow myself.  And I don't get to reap,
either.  You should hope that I at least get to whine, but even that
privilege would seem to be taken.

> I expressed my "deep feelings".  Yes I was disappointed, like when I
> see a reply like a "RTFM" smack in the face of a new user, or as a
> "no" as only-argument answer to a request/suggestion.  My main goal
> was to attract attention to Emilio's nice project of music font with
> LilyPond.  I attracted Graham's attention on me instead.

It needs more work, obviously, and you are disappointed that nobody
volunteers for that.

I have ordered a replacement laptop because my old laptop broke down.
While doing pretty much exclusively LilyPond work.  The replacement
costs money, somewhat over €250.  It is the cheapest used durable
multicore laptop I can get, and I _need_ this kind of setup for
reasonably providing unpaid slave labor for which users express
"disappointment" because it is not enough for their taste.

Would you expect anybody to pitch in for that kind of expense?  Good
joke.

> I would be delighted to offer our finest Belgian beer to LilyPond
> developers which I could meet at FOSDEM 2012.

Can't afford it.

> I am afraid my student budget does not allow me to pay developers to
> work full time on LilyPond.

At least you have a budget.  I don't.

> Cheers,
> Whining Xavier

-- 
David Kastrup