IMO a customer (especially in this environment), should be considered a person with limited knowledge , (but enough to understand the system), that wants to learn and improve by getting involved in purchasing and installing Theme & Extension for his/her system. Unfortunately (by the look of things), it seems that the majority of customers knowledge is basic to say the least. But you can't blame them for trying...(we all had to start somewhere)OSWorX wrote: Could you (or someone) define what a 'customer' or 'user' is?
Can someone be called a customer who is able to push the On-Button of his device and think OpenCart is a 'App'??
Or should he know a bit what Internet means, a bit of basic understanding what a 'Server' is, a 'website', etc.?
Or is it someone who can spell 'Computer' errorfree?
Or someone who knows which permissions folders and files on 'his' server should have?
These days where noobs are offering 'best hosting' which security holes greater than the 'Great Barrier Reef', but cheaper than a 'Mac' - everybody think he is the 'King'.
Do you want them call 'Customers' - really??
So as you have pointed out, like noobs can offer "best hosting" the same noobs can also upload themes and extensions... Why... Because there is no standard or quality control in place...
Imagine how simpler things would be if (lets take Opencart as example), there was a system check in place so that your theme or extension have to pass a QC before been release in the market. Nothing fancy, just a minimum of tests that your application has to pass to be compatible with the rest of the system.
My way of looking at this problem is that if we are to make money (profit), out of customers with very limited knowledge, the best thing I can do, it to give them a foolproof application. Now we all know that, that is virtually impossible in this environment where everything is in movement.
So the next best thing it is to at least protect them from unnecessary frustrations by at lest providing them with something functional and bugs free! I'm not talking about software conflicts here. In my personal experience with OC I have managed to go through the extremes. From buying extension containing empty folders, to having a developer fixing my problems (my problems, not from his extension) within 5 minutes of me contacting him. Looking back at my experience, I can't help to think that it wasn't fair. I had to go through so much crap before eventually been able to take control of the situation.
I guess what I'm saying here is that, yes the customers knowledge it is a constant problem, but as you go through the forum you can also see the genuine stress and frustration of customers that, while they have the required knowledge, they just did the simple mistake of trusting the community. I don't like that. I'm used to now, but I don't like it.
You can slowly see that this problem is starting to affect everybody around here: customers, developers, Owners...
I believe all of these problems can still be fixed, but time is running out quickly...Someone, somewhere, will eventually get around to fix this common open source problem. I just hope it is us first.