I am glad to see that we share the same vision about the many different ways community members can contribute to open source software. As you correctly state, contributions are broad and varied. I think too many people still believe that the only valuable contribution that can be made is source code, while this is far from being the case. With that regard, we at Talend have always been recognizing value of the same types of contributions than you do.
Of course, the goal of any community nurturing should be to increase the proportion of community members who are active contributors as opposed to passive consumers. But where should the cursor be positioned? Is 1% a "good" number? 10%? more than that? Hard to say. It depends on the type of software, its maturity, its audience... And the value of the contributions you are getting. And again, they would be very difficult to quantify. Is a forum response worth more or less than a bug fix? Is a case study worth more or less than a tutorial?
However, at the end of the day, you cannot underestimate the contribution of the non-contributors, even if it sounds paradoxical. These non-contributors allow Jaspersoft to be the maker of the world's most widely used business intelligence software. They allow Talend to have 10 times more users than Informatica and IBM DataStage combined.
Commercial open source vendors have a duty to encourage contribution. Contribution is good for everyone: the contributor, the project, the other users, the community, the vendor. But commercial open source vendors also have the duty to continue providing the best software to everyone, including non contributors.
Brian,
I am glad to see that we share the same vision about the many different ways community members can contribute to open source software. As you correctly state, contributions are broad and varied. I think too many people still believe that the only valuable contribution that can be made is source code, while this is far from being the case. With that regard, we at Talend have always been recognizing value of the same types of contributions than you do.
Of course, the goal of any community nurturing should be to increase the proportion of community members who are active contributors as opposed to passive consumers. But where should the cursor be positioned? Is 1% a "good" number? 10%? more than that? Hard to say. It depends on the type of software, its maturity, its audience... And the value of the contributions you are getting. And again, they would be very difficult to quantify. Is a forum response worth more or less than a bug fix? Is a case study worth more or less than a tutorial?
However, at the end of the day, you cannot underestimate the contribution of the non-contributors, even if it sounds paradoxical. These non-contributors allow Jaspersoft to be the maker of the world's most widely used business intelligence software. They allow Talend to have 10 times more users than Informatica and IBM DataStage combined.
Commercial open source vendors have a duty to encourage contribution. Contribution is good for everyone: the contributor, the project, the other users, the community, the vendor. But commercial open source vendors also have the duty to continue providing the best software to everyone, including non contributors.
Yves