So, in a scenario like this, where the competition is a super mega company with effectively infinite money, I think we should all agree not to make comments like this about FOSS projects.
I know that sounda crazy but here me out. One of Microsoft's old tricks is called FUD. It stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The idea is that people's opinions of things can be nudged using fear, uncertainty and doubt. Enough to sway opinion at scale.
In this case, if you truly believed an app is superb, you're doing it a massive disservice by giving it your criticism publicly. I know, I know, how dare I suggest you not provide useful feedback on a public forum. But the thing is, I believe your single comment will prevent a not insignificant amount of adoption! Adoption by the masses often helps these projects undertake QoL improvements like what your comment describes.
Contradictorily, I believe honest critism of entrenched apps made by huge corporations is vital to help the smaller guys get a chance to share the wealth for exatly the same reasons.
I also firmly believe it can only backfire spectacularly. What you are explicitly advocating is asymmetric FUD "for the good guys".
And it's not like people won't notice the scrolling and re-draw of the app; I've experienced it myself and it's a massive deal breaker for regular usage :| . If anything, saying "I enjoy this app even with this crappy aspect", may help people get over that initial, immediate hump and see the value in rest of the product.
I firmly believe people won't try it if they think there's even a small chance it's not the best thing out there. Again, I use Microsoft's get the facts campaign of FUD from years ago. Simple, and extremely effect and deterred many fence sitters.
Assuming that by 'adoption' you mean, regular use of the product.
There is also expectation management, which is an important aspect in marketing. The goal here is to set the expectation of a future user at the actual value the product delivers to the user. This can go wrong in two ways:
1. Underdeliver - user will be disappointed, i.e. negative user experience.
2. Overdeliver - user will be content, but expects you to overdeliver in the future as well, which you will not be able to do indefinitely.
My point is: it is key to manage expectations of future users. Pointing out both strengths and weaknesses of the product makes sure expectations match actual value and make for an overall positive user experience when evaluating for adoption.
Sure, if you have a marketing budget you can do all kinds of stuff. Here, OP is marketing against the app which is already at the disadvantage of not having a marketing budget and being free (which people incorrectly associate with bad).
So.. You know, do the devs a favour and don't market against them? It doesn't harm you to just stay out of it if you don't have anything nice to say. Go dunk on the big corps. They can financially handle it.
You seem to think that 'marketing' equals 'deception to trick people into buying a product'. This is a very narrow view.
Marketing is a much broader field [1]. Of course a part of it is about how to effectively convey an idea to someone. However, deceiving people will only work for short-term businesses, as it is much more work to build your image after a deception or schandal. That is why brands often cease to exist after a schandal, as starting a new brand is much easier.
I developed an open source app myself and I'd rather inform future users about its limitations before they use it. This way, they have a positive feeling towards the app, even though it could not deliver value in their case. This has nothing to do with budget (for my open source project, budget is ~0 anyways). You need budget for advertising, reaching out to potential customers, engage with your customers, etc. The budget needed for clearly communicating the value of your product is negligible.
You seem to think that downsides or limitations are inherently negative. Knowing a downside in advance is actually a huge advantage.
[1]: "Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing
Didn't say pretend, asked to treat zero to low budget FOSS better than we do mega corps with infinite budgets. Help adoption by not needlessly pointing out minor issues on otherwise incredible programs. I think it's fair when the competition can market their way into anyone's pocket.
Meanwhile, Atlassian forbids in their ToS to comment publicly about Jira’s performance. Along the lines of “You will not: (d) Publicly disseminate information about the performance of the Products.”
Disagree, I think this backfires when you hear only positive praise for some software, mainly because it's Open Source, etc - then the experience is really lacking. I think it sets expectations too high.
Lots of paid stuff sucks, but marketing money convinces the masses to use it. The request is that you at the very least don't help the powerful marketing budgets.
This is a major fundamental usability concern. I’m really not concerned with what the competition is or what tone fans of this particular app expect everyone to use to help in the noble battle against the competition. I think it’s entirely appropriate to point out major usability issues and to have high usability standards for the entire software industry.
It's really not a usability concern. It works great. I didn't even notice until OP mentioned it (I imagine others woudlnt have noticed either but now will, thus my post)
Just wanted to pitch in and say i didnt notice it either until it was mentioned here. Your points are both incredibly controversial while still having reason. I kind of wonder if a similar mentality can observed in iOS vs Android. Are android users more critical of their own ecosystem as compared to ios users? That hasn't really hurt android's market share, but perhaps that's mainly due to the premium price of iPhones.
Could be! Could very well be. I personally prefer android devices because there's more variety.
As for my controversial take, I'm just trying to limit the abuse of our collective goodwill by marketers, generally. They take advantage of our good nature as we assume the best possible interpretation of their actions/words, or pretend as if the generosity of FOSS devs deserve the same criticism as a trillion dollar company just because the end results look the same on our phone. People would see it differently if they stood everyone at Google beside everyone at OSMAnd for example. Google has an astonishing 135,000 (or more) employees. OSMAnd has 20 if you include major contributors.
I know that sounda crazy but here me out. One of Microsoft's old tricks is called FUD. It stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The idea is that people's opinions of things can be nudged using fear, uncertainty and doubt. Enough to sway opinion at scale.
In this case, if you truly believed an app is superb, you're doing it a massive disservice by giving it your criticism publicly. I know, I know, how dare I suggest you not provide useful feedback on a public forum. But the thing is, I believe your single comment will prevent a not insignificant amount of adoption! Adoption by the masses often helps these projects undertake QoL improvements like what your comment describes.
Contradictorily, I believe honest critism of entrenched apps made by huge corporations is vital to help the smaller guys get a chance to share the wealth for exatly the same reasons.