Re: Open Source - Enterprise Consumer Participation -- request for Article

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Murray:

> What is useful is 

I think it is also useful to encourage end-user activism.  Getting
end users to get more involved with promoting free software in
general, or the humanitarian efforts enabled via free software.
The politics of free software, for example.

It might be good to try and foster users to consider "connecting
the dots" and, for example, encouraging people with a libertarian
mindset to get on board with the free sofware movement, the EFF,
or other organizations that benefit the free software movement.
The current article doesn't really explore these angles with much
depth.

In other words, end-users probably benefit the free software
movement more when they are advocating free software, rather than
trying to help with specific technical issues.  In general, anyway,
there are obviously some users who are technically inclined and
who are helpful in a technical arena as well.

Brian


> - Informed users, talking to us on existing mailing lists.
> - Users talking about very specific issues, on bugzilla.
> - Distros giving feedback based on their own mailing lists and bug
> reports, and on their informed priorities.
> - For more wide-reaching feedback, users taking part in usability
> studies or requirements gathering, guided by informed people.
> This is the stuff that doesn't happen often much because it's a lot of
> work. Without the guidance, regular users just aren't very capable of
> providing useful freeform feedback. Users don't like to hear that
> though.