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by jlgreco 4707 days ago
The last point you raise is one of the reasons that I think the drive to bring as many "proverbial grandmothers" to Linux presents a very serious concern.

Imagine if Linux distros started getting treated like Android does? Android got those legions of "regular" users and participants that everybody seems to want and it is not a pretty scene because of it.
1 comments
yareally 4707 days ago
Great point. I've had more than one conversation with friends in the Android community where we try to understand exactly why the Android development community is as toxic as it is at times.

Part of it definitely has to do with the end users getting too close to those doing the development and the result is chaos. It ends with users totally disrespecting real developers--stirring up unnecessary drama and fanboyism. Then there's users that compiled Android (or worse, added a few apps into a ROM by opening it in 7zip) and are suddenly an Android development expert (and users that believe it by defending them and donating money).

I'm just glad that most other development communities on the web are much more civil (though I'm sure there's outliers). Even with Ubuntu's rise in popularity, it comes nowhere close to matching the appalling behavior I've witnessed with Android. I've seen people belittled by users for simply trying to post an honest bug report to a developer in their forum thread. Though with the way users spam up those threads with offtopic discussion, one is just as likely to have their bug report missed/ignored.

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pnathan 4707 days ago
> Part of it definitely has to do with the end users getting too close to those doing the development and the result is chaos.

I don't understand what you mean. Shouldn't a close relationship between developers and users be a key goal in development?

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jevinskie 4707 days ago
I think the point is that the relationship isn't getting useful work done. In a ROM thread on XDA developers there are no good bug reports with reproductions, expected results, etc. It is a bunch of people saying "this doesn't work" and "no of course it should work for you because it works on my phone" and especially off-the-cuff performance evaluations ("much smoother, no stuttering or lag"). It is difficult to figure out who knows their shit and who is just bullshitting.
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