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Story: Open source projects 'need more customer focus'

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To Anonymous
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Bakcground: I was an IT Consuntant for 15 years with a major international IT services firm, I now work independently. I use a Linux desktop for day-to-day work, the Windows machine is still there for certain tasks that require it, so I do use a lot of OOS software and I have done many major corporate development projects over the years.
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A little bit of fuding to be sure, but the report does have some basis in fact. Many projects lack good documentation. I was looking to set up a VPN on my firewall, so went to the documentation web site for the product. The whole section on VPN was just a bunch of screenshots with the text "to be written," not a single word on how to configure the VPN, no definition of what right side or left side IP Adresses are...

Support for older versions is also vitally important in a business environment. Look at MS's record for "dumping" old products only to get an uproar from customers and announcing another 6 months of extended support - and not even software that is that old, look at the Windows XP SP debacle last year...

I've worked with companies which still used DOS or OS/2 based software in a production environment because "it works," they don't need anything newer - as long as bugs and security issues are addressed. And forcing them to upgrade to a new version to fix a small bug, which requires newer hardware isn't a good way to keep your customers happy.

Open source does do a great job, and many of the projects are run professionalyl, but some still need to take these concerns onboard. Their products might be first class, but without first class support and documentation they won't get into business. The support issue can be provided by third parties, true, but they take on a big burden of responsibility if something goes wrong and the developers are unresponsive...

Good user and administration documentation is almost more important thant the product itself! For the projects I've worked on, we've always had to produce extensive and high quality documentation for the code and user and admin guides which are clear and in plain English before the client would sign off on the product.

As I said, some projects do provide some or all of this information and are run on a professional or semi-professional basis. Others concentrate on getting a running product out the door and because the project is run from almost a 100% technical side and the people writing the code know how to use it, things like documentation get forgotten. Downloading an accounting suite whose documentation consists of a not on which directory to shove it into and a list of bug fixes in the current release doesn't inspire confidence and probably won't gain as many customers (even if the code is superior) as one which comes with a couple of hundred pages of documentation on how to actually use and support the system!

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