wkitty42 wrote in Thu Dec 01, 2016 8:00 pm:we'll have to agree to disagree on that aspect...
all projects that i've worked with over the last 20 years have fallen into disarray when development discussions moved to open forums and the devs had to deal with all kinds of stuff from the users... when they went back to the mailing lists, they were able to concentrate without the distractions and get actual work done without spending hours a day reading and posting to users... those hours were instead used for actual coding and debugging... YMMV, though...
with all that said, there are some who are willing to cross-post some things to the dev list and play intermediary... some will just post a link to the forum topic... if you ask, someone may be willing to do this since you don't seem to be amenable to doing it yourself where you can provide the answers to their questions directly...
Well then wkitty42,
The "mailing list" should not be available to end users.
The "mailing list" should not be presented or even mentioned in the general fora.
I can understand the how and why of developers needing their space.
But my point remains true: if the developers get too far out of touch with the needs of the end users, then the FlightGear project will ultimately fail.
It's simple economics.
It's a law, it governs "how things work in this world".
"20 years this", "20 years that" , it all means nothing dear wkitty42, it only means "blah blah blah"
The only thing that matters is the state of the project in the here and now of 2016.
The laws of simple economics govern, because they are laws.
cj