I know open-source is all about scratching the itch, submitting patches, and being open about things, but sometimes I feel like the devs in charge of certain projects aren’t visionary enough. Meaning, they don’t see the coming trends and what will be important in 6 months and poo-poo things that aren’t of concern today.
Maybe that’s ok, but I like to think that I’m as bleeding-edge as the next geek, and when projects hold back what you want to do, or others see no value in it, all you can really do is hack at your own copy of the code, maybe submit a patch, and hope people catch on in the future… Sure there are plugins and extensions, but sometimes you need changes to the core, or to things that no one else would ever think needs a change. Change… Change…
I used to accuse Microsoft of developing things in a half-assed way just so they could add it to the checklist and say “Yup, we got that feature!” but on occasion I think some open-source projects are doing that too. Users also tend to get in the habit of working around things that aren’t quite right, and not complaining about it, but just “get used to it” and eventually become blind to it, thinking “that’s how it works” even if the usability is poor and the users suffer.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe open-source is the way to go, and how software should be written, but sometimes I just feel like some of the leaders need to be more risk-takers in looking to the future.
Of course we sometimes see people who are visionary, but have a hard time convincing others that there needs to be code to realise the vision, so, well, let’s just say when everything lines up right, good things can happen. We need more good things happening…