Re: Tux Racer 0.10 Released

[Thomas Lund <tld@carlbro.dk>]

Steve Baker wrote:
> 
> Thomas Lund wrote:
> 
> > Steve: please don't take our mails as hostile. We are just honest I
> > think.
> 
> Sure - I'm not upset - I'm always interested in constructive criticism.

And I hope this IS constructive criticism. Or at least that someone gets
something out of this.

I'll just reply shortly to the lengthy mail.

I fully agree with most of your points! Don't get me wrong on that
part.   OpenSource lives and evolves around feedback. No feedback, nu
evolution. And in a perfect world with 50 hours a day, I would test
every piece of software that I find and help make it better.

But I do not have that much time on my hands. Plus I think most people
out in the world are basicly a little lazy (I know I am).

So my point is, that if you do not try to make a project "inviting and
tasty" (sorry for another analogy), nobody will check it out. Even if
you have 5 stars, and a heck of a game/application inside. I am not just
talking about tux_aqfh, but opensource projects in general.

In the world we live in everything is about first impressions. I don't
like it a bit more than you, but that is just the way thing is. So if
the webpage sucks, the compile goes wrong, the machine crashes -
whatever, then I have judged the project before I can see the actual
thing. And i firmly believe this is how most people think about it.

But if you can get someone to download it and it works at the first (or
second) try, a shitty webpage does not matter. If you have a flashy
webpage, some nice screenshots and a good rating, I will try harder to
get it going than not.

But combining a non-flashy webpage with a program that is hard to
compile (or the libs) does not make people want to give it the extra
try. Or send a bug report for that matter.

The same goes for finding people to help your project. That is actually
what triggered my first response to this thread. Finding someone to make
tracks, music, code or whatever is also a matter of selling yourself and
your project. Very few projects have good documentation for people to
get a quick overview of what is missing, what is working, how to add a
track and so forth.

A nice webpage is the first step in that direction, but by no means the
only thing. If everything is just a cover with no value inside, Darwin
quickly comes along and kills it.

Best regards
Thomas

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