@smallcircles I have made various attempts in the past to explain to FLOSS communities that they need to have at least their users implied in their governance, and ideally even more distant stakeholders. With little success.
The typical reaction is one of
- Users get our work for free, they have no right to complain.
- Users can join our community, e.g. by contributing to documentation, and then they have a say as well.
> One of my biggest lightbulb moments in systems theory class was realizing that even humans who may never directly interact within the scope of your design are very much still stakeholders
Exactly, very true. It is funny.. a couple years ago and inspired by @aral tooting about it, I started practicing avoidance of the word "user".
This now comes very natural to me, to the extent that so many uses of the word really poke me in the eye with how artificial, unnatural, distancing, and yes.. even inhumane they are.
#CodingIsSocial #people! We "social code the social code" of #society.
"User" is a #tech word, same as "Reverse proxy" or "Factory class". And its a leaky #abstraction that serves to lose all #nuance, and is best avoided. Furthermore it implies an #ownership relationship between devs and their captivated audience, that doesn't, shouldn't exist.
I'm behind schedule on a #ParadoxOfEmergence blogpost, may address this.. https://discuss.coding.social/t/sx-sustainable-ecosystem-evolution-see/836
Ditch use of #user! ✊
@smallcircles I have made various attempts in the past to explain to FLOSS communities that they need to have at least their users implied in their governance, and ideally even more distant stakeholders. With little success.
The typical reaction is one of
- Users get our work for free, they have no right to complain.
- Users can join our community, e.g. by contributing to documentation, and then they have a say as well.
Indeed. And we see what the result is. After various supply chain attacks and whole range of other software supply line related issues that typically are not well handled in most #FOSS projects, the 'market' (need not be commercial clients per se) start demanding all kinds of quality compliance guarantees.
In the new and upcoming #HorizonEurope grant programs by @EUCommission I heard - there was much discussion about this - on changing nature of #NGI0 #grants as provided by @nlnet whereby the #EU mandate shifts towards placing bigger focus on these concerns.
Though I admit that I'm not fully in the loop, and neither do I know if things were already all clearly communicated to the public. Perhaps @michiel or someone else at #NLnet might point to the most relevant info resource atm.
Other than that, the misunderstandings which lead to perceived #entitlement (client/customer) or #privilege (creator/devs) are expectation mismatch, solvable by better comms practices.
@smallcircles Better comms practices is where I'd start as well. For example: if you consider yourself a community project rather than a software vendor, don't make a Web page that advertises a project, make a Web page that showcases a community.
