*sigh³*
Over the last couple of weeks I received some flak regarding my way with going about lowfat. Some bits I cover in the added FAQ-section of it. Thank god I also got encouraging notes from people, but the negative parts always weight heavier than the positive parts. This takes the motivation to spend your spare-time on it down considerably. Trying to see only the positive feedback and mask out the negative never works so well… at least for me. How do others deal with that “dark side” of community-reactions?
May 21st, 2006 at 3:50 pm
I for one love lowfat and I think you should develop for the people who like it, not for those who don’t.
May 21st, 2006 at 4:01 pm
I can’t deal with it very well either, but tell me if you found a solution…
May 21st, 2006 at 4:40 pm
You have walk a fine line between.
1. Extreme patience, because 1 out of 100 mad raving idiots acually have something useful to say, even if they have a hateful way of saying it.
2. Ignoring obvious psychos and try not to take it personally. It’s just like riding public transport.
If you are lucky, your project gets big enough that you can do less of 1. and more of 2., because there’s enough nice people to give you the feedback you need.
May 21st, 2006 at 4:49 pm
> How do others deal with that “dark side” of community-reactions?
Like all trolls, they should be ignored.
May 21st, 2006 at 4:51 pm
By the way, I think this project is very exciting. Just to be clear though, what kind of license do you plan to release it with when it finally gets released?
May 21st, 2006 at 4:55 pm
I never understand that some people do those kind of things. Each and every reaction i’ve had in the FOSS world has always been kind and helpfull (or had the intent of being helpful). I guess there are just some stupid people who like to flame everything. While i also would like to have the source open, i understand that it is yours and you may do with it as you please.
May 21st, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Keep in mind that people are much more likely to say something when they are bitchy than when they agree with you.
Good luck with lowfat.
May 21st, 2006 at 6:38 pm
I try to be in a certain mood when I’m reading any feedback email such that I can read the email, pull out the interesting bits, and ditch the vitriol.
Most of the time I don’t get a lot of vitriol. It makes it easier when you have really good project documentation and you document why things are architected and written the way they are. I find doing that causes fewer, "you must be stupid to do xxx" and more "i don’t agree with your reasons for xxx". I think part of the problem is that people guess at motives if they’re not documented anywhere and the predominant guess is that I must be stupid.
Anyhow, the mood thing is a good idea. I try to make sure people know that I read email and will try to respond within a week. Then I accumulate the email in a bit bucket until I’m in the right mindset to read it If I get a bunch of craptastic ones in a row, I’ll stop reading and go do something else. My theory is that if people want me to respond sooner, they should be nicer so that it’s easier for me to do so.
/will
May 21st, 2006 at 7:30 pm
Greetings!
What do you use to capture those videos?
Nice work! Ignore the trolling, at least you are not slashdotted
PS: This is out of subjet but where can I found this WP theme? Is it yours? Can I have it? Can I use it / change it? is CCL?
May 21st, 2006 at 7:47 pm
@all: Thanks a lot everybody for the encouraging lines!
@pejcaofrito: I use gvidcap (doh, I still didn’t do that little tutorial on this) to make the screencasts. Yes this WordPress-theme is my own creation. I never really thought about sharing it, since it is very specific for my blog and a bit nastily hacked up CSS and HTML. I also touched some of the WordPress-templates… I think. It’s been almost a year or so that I did it. All in all something that definitely does not pass the W3C-validation tests. But if you’re still interested I would put it under a CCL and make it available. Write me an eMail regarding this.
May 21st, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Hi,
I read several comments on this now and I think many people are driven by _fear_ when they react unfriendly on your actions.
Imagine Apple knocks on your door and they want it for OSX and you as a developer… lowfat would die for the community and another software patent is made
Nevertheless people can’t live from air and sun, lowfat still looks great and I’m looking forward towards a first release. Good luck from my side.
May 21st, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Here’s a new twist … maybe you should take the griping as a compliment.
I know that when I first read about lowfat, I got really excited. Both bling and usefulness? Awesome! Read the story, scroll down the page, admire the screenshots … what? No source? No CVS? How cruel of you to tempt us with such treats, then not let us play with them ourselves.
Well, that was my reaction, at least. And while I understand why you want to get things a little more settled before releasing it upon the unsuspecting world (thanks for the FAQ, btw), I can also easily see how such reactions from readers would turn into "you’re not being true to the open-source ideals! Remember, release early and release often!" I think you should take the grousing as a measure of just how excited people are getting about your work. I for one am eagerly looking forward to playing with it.
Keep up the good work!
May 22nd, 2006 at 2:59 am
MacSlow (what does that mean anyways?)
Try remembering that those people dont represent youre real usebase. 99.9% of users (literally, if you have one complainer for each 1000 users) are like me; they sit in their homes and offices, and say "wow, thats cool. cant wait until its done and I can try it out" but otherwise have busy lives and have better things to do than flame others…
Same with politics. Most people are not extremists, but its always the extremists who make the most noise and drown out all rational people.
Now, wrt to your project. f0rking cool. I was thinking with powerful graphics primitives on every desktop now, this is precisely the next gen stuff we can and now have to do to get computer interfaces to the next level of usability. Dude, push that envelope for all of us who either cant or wont!
May 22nd, 2006 at 8:55 am
@luother: Hm… I don’t think Apple would "buy" me. They would rather copycat it I guess… just thinking of the SuperKaramba->Dashboard incident.
@Brian: Haven’t ever looked at it that way. Teasing anybody was never my intention.
@ryan: Regarding my nickname… it doesn’t have any meaning (although Mac-haters love my nickname, despite the fact it’s not related to computers from Apple in any way) I just happen to like the sound of it.
May 23rd, 2006 at 3:13 am
It looks like amazing cool stuff. I’m a fan of FOSS but I don’t live by it… I spend my working life as a full time developer. This is what pays my bills so I would never have a problem with anyone working on software they hope to eventually make money on. Whether you ever release the source or not, I wish you the best of luck with it. Maybe one day we’ll all work for companies that provide all the software we write to the masses… but until that time, you have to balance things. Some stuff you write is for the world, and some of it isn’t.
May 23rd, 2006 at 9:31 am
Keep up the good work !!
LowFat is what linux lack !
Code for thoses who love and support your work!
PS: Please Don’t forgget the RAW support and the IPTC, that’ll be one of the killers features.
PS2: Sorry for my "English"
May 23rd, 2006 at 10:28 pm
Hi,
lowfat is very impressive. From the name, I had first mistaken it for fefe’s libowfat *g*
lowfat is great in that it revives the Zooming User Interface metaphor, also researched by the late Jef Raskin.
Just look up "Zooming User Interface" on en.wikipedia, I think you will find a few bits and pieces you’ll like.
Best of luck,
Kim~*
May 25th, 2006 at 9:18 am
I do not really have time to read comments but having watched the lowfat demo video, I have to say it is pretty amazing. The way files are managed nowadays is considered very strange by people who are new to computers and sometimes even those who are used to it get frustrated.
I think lowfat has something that would make me switch immediately if it was ready for use. This is the kind of user experience I hope to be able to have someday in the future.
Keep up the good work.
June 22nd, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Just think that just 1% of all positive people give you a response, and just about 100% of the negative people…
People like me are willing to help out. Make lowfat an OpenSource project and it might solve your manpower problem. Form a community of developers around lowfat, and learn them how you’d like to see the code for lowfat. We really want to ‘play’ with it and help out develop lowfat!
I understand that you don’t make it OpenSource, but maybe you could reconsider?
Sometimes you just need a community to make it big…
Keep up the good work!!!