IBlog<Johan>

Johan Danforth's Blog

Syndication

Random Links

Walkthroughs and Tutorials

Some Good Feedback for Writespace

WritespaceIt’s been a while since I actually looked at the Codeplex statistics for Writespace, but it seems that people keep downloading it and that’s always fun! So far Writespace has been downloaded over 4.000 times which is peanuts compared to other open source tools, but perhaps I helped some people get more productive and that feels good!

Following the top referring sites I can see that this simple addin for Word gets some good reviews from people that compares it with other similar tools. One of the best articles I’ve seen so far is the one by Rob Oakes, which he calls On Writing – Software that cuts out distraction and clutter where he compares DarkRoom, WriteRoom, Writespace and PyRoom. They are all very similar to each other.

What’s not so cool is that Writespace is an open source project, and it would have been fun to get some patches or help from other developers. Of the 4.000 downloads, I’m sure there are a whole lot of .NET developers that know their XAML well. I’ve got some feedback for ideas, one guy I know made some changes but didn’t send me code or a patch… pity. If you extend open source software, shouldn’t you share that? Maybe it’s too hard to create a patch?

Published Sunday, October 25, 2009 6:34 PM by jdanforth
Filed under: ,

Comments

# re: Some Good Feedback for Writespace@ Sunday, October 25, 2009 5:28 PM

Hi Johan,

Glad that you found the article helpful.  I also sympathize with your general point here.

I agree that if you use a product, you should contribute in some meaningful way.  I've really enjoyed WriteSpace and I hope you still have plans for the future.  When you say, "it would hav been fun," does that mean you're finished.  Say it ain't so!

In the past few months that I've been running my own little open source project (called Time Drive, a Linux backup program for anyone who might be interested), I've found that very few users actually contribute back in a meaningful way.  I'm not sure why that is, really.

I understand that not everyone can code.  But you can always file bug reports, help write documentation, or donate money.  There are real costs associated with distribution, including bandwidth and hosting fees.  And if there's money left over, no one would fault the developer a night on the town for a relatively free meal.  No one gets rich doing open source.

Right ... with the rant out of the way ... are there small ways that one such as I could contribute?  I don't really have the time to master the source code of a completely different project, but I'd be happy to help with promotional stuff (advertising new releases) or documentation.  I'm also quite happy to throw some money you're way if there is a donation link.

Regardless, thanks for creating a fantastic piece of kit.  I really hope that you've got big plans for the future.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes

by Rob Oakes

Leave a Comment

(required) 
(required) 
(optional)
(required)