There is an interesting “personality type” post on Dougal Campbell’s Geek Ramblings titled Open Source Personality Spectrum.
In and of itself, it is interesting and basically true. Giving it some thought, I suspect that this range of personality traits can be used to identify people’s attitude towards not only software, but towards websites, services, organizations, projects, and even people.
We should strive to fit into either of the following categories:
- Enthusiast – “Likes the application, and is generally positive about it. Will acknowledge that it has some faults, but feels that they are minor enough to ignore, or can be worked around.”
- Stoic – “Uses the application, but views it as a commodity. If something comes along that looks significantly better in some way, he’ll switch.”
Most of the other categories are missing the point: software project, and all the other foci I mentioned, will be at their best when the feedback they receive is accurate. To be unrealistically positive about something or someone is just as harmful as being unrealistically negative.
