I’m a bit taken aback by this post by Jason Harris over on the KDE Developer’s Journals site. Harris says that ” KDE, like many other open-source projects, doesn’t really need users at all, whether they are poisonous or not.”

Now, a qualifier — Harris' post is provoked by a discussion of “poisonous” users, i.e., those select few users who turn up and (intentionally or not) do “contribute” to the project in the form of dissonance and conflict, but the idea that open source doesn’t need users is one that should be strongly refuted.I think virtually everyone agrees that projects would be better off without the trolls, griefers, and assorted characters whose presence adds up to a drag on the project rather than just a passive consumer of code or fan of the project.

I get the gist of Harris argument — KDE (or any other project) can deliver code without any users. So, from a purely functional standpoint, I guess that’s true. To exist, KDE doesn’t need anyone who just uses the code without making contributions. But what’s the point?

An open source project without users is like a band without an audience, a restaurant with no customers, or a writer with no readers. What’s the point in creating something useful, if no one uses it? Why go to the trouble in the first place, if you’re not looking to make something that will be used, and used widely?

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