Supporting end-users effectively

Open source projects generally aren’t set up to provide the level of support you need for a commercial product and for good reason. First is that just from a staffing point of view, there’s rarely the capacity to dedicate the same level of support. And second, in open source, we see a community model, meaning we users help other users, and sometimes bugs and workarounds are worked out together in the open rather than behind closed doors.

While a project can learn from commercial products on strategies for supporting end users, there are some nuances in doing so in an open source project. Let’s begin by looking at what effective support looks like with one of the first touchpoints an end user has with the project – submitting a new issue.

Managing issues

We talked earlier in this chapter about project infrastructure and in Chapter 5, Governance and Hosting Models, about the importance of a README file to guide newcomers...