Disclaimer
Not trying to blame anyone here. I‘m just taking an idea I‘ve read and spinning it further:
Intro
A lot of people use free open source software (foss), Linux being one of them. But a lot less actually help make this software. If I ask them why, they always say „I don’t have the coding skills!“.
Maybe its worth pointing out that you don‘t need them. In a lot of cases it’s better to not have any so you can see stuff with a „consumer view“.
In that situation you can file issues on github and similar places. You can write descriptions that non technical people can understand. You can help translate and so on, all depending on your skills.
Other reasons?
I‘d really like to know so the foss community can talk about making it worthwile for non coders to participate.
Absolutely relatable. Thats why we need to make this a more streamlined process.
Like every foss software, be it games or whatever, should have an easy way to report bugs.
One thing I see different is foss-software and -games: You getting something for free and asking for „everything be dead easy“ without helping it become dead easy is not the most healthy.
You cant compare foss software with for profit software that either takes your money, serves you ads or outright sells your data. Thats only making the world a worse place.
The devs dont make money off you, yet you‘re saying you‘ll not give anything back except if they pave your way to it. I think you should pay for foss software then.
In principle I agree with you. But people sitting behind their keyboards will also be fairly pragmatic about it, pretty often.
People suffer from limited attention. Trying to take a purely principled approach and investing the energy to give back to every project you may want to can become impractical. Especially if one had a busy family and professional life too, it may just not be worth it, however much someone may wish to help.
It’s just the organization of priorities, and simply put, sometimes a few minutes really is too much to ask in certain circumstances.
Thus, removing as many hurdles as possible is probably a worthy investment of a devs time if they want large amounts of feedback. Pragmatic, not based on any ideas of what might be right or wrong, but simply what is probably going to happen most of the time, with no consideration to why that might be or what might be better. Pragmatism is frequently unethical.
Side thought: If someone just puts an email address for receiving feedback somewhere where I’ll see it, I’ll use that too. A UI button isn’t really necessary, just so long as I can send the feedback without having to do my own research in order to do so.
I can write an email though.
