The scenario you describe happens very rare, I
believe.  Most OSS projects that a non-programmer
would use (openoffice?) have a bug tracking system
like bugzilla where they can log their requests and
sooner or later someone will fix the problem.

But you do make a valid point.  This is a problem even
though not a common one.  One related issue has been
quirky and non-standard (non-Windows like) user GUIs
developed and used by the OSS techies.  Non-techies,
who are Windows savy have had hard time switching over
to OSS.  This situation is fast improving though.

--- William Chops Westfield <westfw@mac.com> wrote:

> 
> On Aug 22, 2005, at 10:53 AM, Hasan A. Khan wrote:
> 
> > I don't know what "modern day hippies" are telling
> you
> > to go open source but it is all about having a
> choice.
> >  Open source and "free" gives me a better choice
> than
> > closed software so I will always choose OSS over
> > proprietary.
> 
> Yeah, it all seems so easy if you're a programmer
> and think you
> won't have problems doing the build/fix/maintain/etc
> yourself.
> Till you find a problem that you can't fix for one
> reason or
> another, and no one in the community is interested
> in fixing
> it either.  If you're NOT a programmer, then it
> looks to me
> like there's very little effective difference
> between open
> source and proprietary software - you can't maintain
> either one
> yourself, and are at the mercy of "vendors."
> 
> BillW
> -- 
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-Hasan
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