[OpenLayers-Users] Intuitive and good looking icons

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 10:17:56PM +0200, Mika Lehtonen wrote:
> Christopher Schmidt kirjoitti:
> > attitude is everything when communicating with
> >     a mailing list
> Shouldn't that also concern developers?

Absolutely; and developers like me who are rude end up paying for it.  

> I am asking this because I've been noticing that in OL-users list there 
> are time to time so hostile responses to the users ideas that for 
> example I haven't ever experienced such in the Geoserver users list. 

Is this thread an example? Do you have other examples? (Are they all me?
In which case, that's fair, and I should probably just get off the users
list.) 

> I think that all the users throwing ideas in the list are just trying
> to make things better, not to question developers competence or
> ability to do their work. 

I think that many users of OpenLayers consider it to be the
responsibility of someone else to fix their problems. I think that's a
silly expectation, and I don't feel that it's neccesary to entertain all
ideas that come -- since for every idea that comes with code behind it,
10 more come in as "Wouldn't it be nice if?"

There are many things that would be nice, but given that a huge majority
of OpenLayers development is done by a very small core of developers,
with limited contribution from people who wish that things would somehow
magically get better, the social environment degrades. This thread is an
example of that, in my opinion.
http://openlayers.org/pipermail/users/2009-February/010300.html is
another case where I blew up.

In fact, reviewing the OL-users list, I see that I respond an order of
magnitude more times than all other trunk OL developers combined. If
there is a feeling that developers are being rude to users, then that
can only be coming from my behavior.  I think that's a sign that I
shouldn't be on the users mailing list anymore. Thank you for pointing
that out to me; from here foreward, I will shy away from responding the
users list.

> Yeah, it easily happens that you come up with a superb idea and share
> it in the list without thinking how to put it in there or
> reconsidering how superb it really is. But one shouldn't take it as an
> insult or yelling. In my opinion, everyone should have one vote,
> regardless of whether you are a developer or an user, to vote for
> things and features you like. After all, it isn't just developers who
> are making open source (software) possible.

It is my belief that everyone who is contributing code should
absolutely get one vote.  

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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