There is a common view in OSS that end-users who don’t contribute to a project in any way other than *gasp* using the project aren’t terribly important. Some projects far more loudly than others. I’m of the strong view that this is a huge limiter in the adoption and useful to the user growth of project and in the long term hinders the adoption of projects whose theoretical target user is not someone willing to fight with the ideosyncracies of a product to use it.
Now the project I’m writing about here, Scribus, is far from one of the worst offender’s in this category but there is a clear divide between the active developers and the theoretical users. The Devs, when I can find and talk to them, are pretty cool to deal with but trying to get an idea about what is going on can be massively frustrating. It is not the most transparent project. I don’t get the feeling its a deliberate thing, just REALLY far from a priority.
I’ve contributed a few small things a few times, dug into guts to write better bug reports and written many an RFE, so I think I’m maybe a step above that actual useless user step – but only barely. We’ll find out.
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