Rated 1 out of 5 stars

by Daniel Beardsmore on March 3, 2012 ·

What's the sense in even bothering putting up software for everyone to use, if you belligerently refuse to make it do what people need?

You can huff and puff all you like, but if you're not motivated by what your userbase actually needs, then what's the use in even making software publicly available? It makes you a particularly poor developer. It's not like this is a flood of competing and illogical requests, or out-of-scope requests (those are difficult, obviously), but a very clear message that e-mail usage has changed in the 21st century. I've come to prefer top posting myself anyway as the only thing I'm interested in reading is what the recipient wrote! And if I need to grab their phone number from a signature, the last place I want that is way down the bottom of the message.

This seems to be a common programmer defect – a wilful lack of interest in and concern for the people actually using their software, especially when it comes to bug fixes. If you must be obstinate about it, don't clutter up the Internet with your work. If you must post software, try to make the program do what people actually want it to do!

This review is for a previous version of the add-on (1.6.9). 

by Achim Seufert (Developer) on March 3, 2012 ·

Who said that I "_bellingerently_ refuse" to do something?
And what makes you believe that it's my duty to deliver the software "people need"?

I developed those extensions in my spare-time... and give them away for free.
The reason I created them was the fact that Mozilla's software lacked some features I personally needed.
Fortunately Mozilla-products can be extended by open-source software.
Making my addons publicly availabe is my contribution to free software. (Which by the way can be altered by yourself, if you need to!)
And believe it or not. There actually are a lot of people out there that are happy with my addon the way it is!

You're obviously aware that the "issue" you complain about has been addressed several times before and received my attention.
Yet you felt the need to bash my work and "downrate" the addon.
In addition to this you call me a "particularly poor developer" and claim that there "seems to be a common programmer defect – a wilful lack of interest in and concern for the people actually using their software, especially when it comes to bug fixes".

Very mature, indeed.

If you check the changelogs on my website you'll see that I actually did implement a lot of user-requested features in the past.
And if there are things that I don't want to implement (or don't have the resources to) then you should just accept it.
Or even better start coding your own perfect addon right away!

So what have you done to improve Firefox/Thunderbird, Daniel Beardsmore?
What's your contribution on free software?

Giving helpful comments/ratings like the one you did over here?

Believe me... you're not helping a bit.