Re: Git User's Survey 2007 unfinished summary continued

From: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Oct 14, 2007, 01:44 UTC
Message-ID: <20071014014445.GN27899@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0710131810550.6887@woody.linux-foundation.org>

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> On Sun, 14 Oct 2007, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> >
> > My main point is -- and always was -- that I'd like people to realise how 
> > much it depends on _them_ if (and when) their wishes come true.
> 
> Dscho, that's just not fair.

...

Show 6 quoted lines

> Complain about it when somebody asks for something *stupid*. Explain why 
> it would be wrong to do something like that. But don't complain about 
> people having wish-lists, even if those people may not work on them.
> 
> Not everybody is a "doer". It's important to get input from people who are 
> just plain users, or hope to be.

I agree with both of you. My understanding of Dscho's original comment was that people weren't saying *what* specifically their wish-list was, which means we have no hope as a community of meeting their requests.

Carl and Andy both had submitted a long list of very specific issues that they had with Git. The result of those lists being posted was a number of people contributed improvements that lead us to 1.5. Nobody can argue with that.

But just saying "MY GOD FIX THE UI" is not a wishlist item (yes, that was a real survey answer). It provides the community no chance to understand what parts of the UI we need to work on, and what parts the end-user is OK with or just hasn't even tried to use.

-- 
Shawn.