Re: On what we want to support: travel?

dan(at)langille(dot)org ("Dan Langille") writes:
> On 6 Nov 2006 at 10:46, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 20:29:43 -0500,
>> Dan Langille <dan(at)langille(dot)org> wrote:
>> > On 1 Nov 2006 at 20:36, Stefan 'Kaishakunin' Schumach wrote:
>> >
>> > More users mean more resources to draw from. When people get
>> > enthusiastic about something, they have energy to contribute. In
>> > general, people do not go out of their way to contribute to projects
>> > they have no interest in.
>>
>> It also means more users to support. Depending on the mix of new users,
>> the overall effect on the project could end up being negative.
>
> That is possible. It is not probable. The existing culture affects
> affects new users. They tend to adapt accordingly.

There's also a vital degree of "self selection."

"Clueless new users" might get excited about adopting a new version of
a web browser or some "desktop framework" such that you get a
thundering herd of people that are essentially useless to ongoing
development.

But a database engine is much more a tool, as opposed to "end user
application." New users may not be up to the task of making
improvements to the query optimizer, but they can't be so helpless
that they can't integrate the DB into the application for which they
intend to use it...
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