17 Jul
2009
17 Jul
'09
12:15 p.m.
Hello Samuel,
Friday, July 17, 2009, 10:54:34 AM, you wrote:
Hello everyone. I find myself today thinking, as I
sometimes do,
about the ReactOS problem.
Good post, Samuel, but it seems you are mostly concerned with
attracting users. I think that on this stage of the project it all
boils down to the Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers,
developers".
You propose to fix a lot of things, but who's gonna fix them?
Developers. Everything depends on the quality and quantity of
developers this project is able to attract.
It is indeed strange that after so many years there are so few
developers. Why is that?
It can be a "bad" attraction:
* Bad attraction: lack of effort
* Bad attraction: tough (project is not sexy enough)
* Bad attraction: many come, but of the wrong kind => bad retention,
must ban them
Or/and "bad" retention:
* Bad retention: disappointment in the project
* Bad retention: disappointment in organization
* Bad retention: disappointment in people and group dynamics
* Bad retention: lured by corporations as soon as they got noticed
These are just items that popped up into my mind. I am sure many of
you have more reasons. We can create a poll on the forum to see what
people think about those reasons for the lack of developers.
About "this is an open-source, free project, so we have no control
over people and can't force them to do what needs to be done" – this
is simply not true. It is not a secret, that once a salary of a
developer in a company reaches a certain minimum level, money stop to
be the primary motivator. Non-tangible things become more important.
Since people come work here without pay this means they already have
the basic level of income. They can be teenagers, living off their
parents. They can be students. They can be people with day job or
people with external income sources. So the money is not the primary
motivator here (duh!).
By realizing that greater motivation comes from intangible things and
consciously focusing on them, trying to understand what they are, it
is possible to control and direct people.
Even better than the money can do.
--
Best regards,
Alex mailto:care2debug@gmail.com