A long time ago this forum included an active section for customers (and other forum users) to make and discuss suggestions for enhancements and improvements to Hauptwerk. This still remains in the structure at
http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewforum.php?f=23 but now this section only contains an invitation to send such suggestions to MDA via a link which is presently broken (so you can’t use this route).
It was I think helpful to customers to see what ideas others had and indeed to find that sometimes their “new request/idea” as actually already included in the product. In the discussion customers’ requirements could be clarified and better defined.
I can understand from MDA’s position this part of the forum might be a little “dangerous”. If MDA commented on the ideas, some customers, albeit mistakenly, might believe that this was a commitment that their requirement would be met in a future release of Hauptwerk. MDA may also have had some concerns that competitors might look this part of the forum to spot what opportunities they could have for developing their product.
Having worked with software “manufacturers”, both very large and small for many years, and indeed been a part of a large software development organisation for a time, they have generally all benefited from customer input and suggestions on how the customers think the product might be better developed. Generally these customer discussions have been open within the customer community and participation from the software company rather limited (focusing on the existing announced features of the product). With some “user groups” (for example IBM and Digital/DEC) we had elaborate voting mechanisms to give the software manufacturers so idea of (voting) customer preferences: sometimes this input was acknowledged by the software company and sometimes not.
I think there might be some benefit to customers and MDA, our software supplier, if this forum once again had an area where customers could make and discuss the enhancements they would like to see (and presumably buy) for Hauptwerk (and sample sets?). I think it would be sensible for MDA and perhaps sample set suppliers not to comment on the suggestions made other than to limit any input to “feature already available” type of comments. It would need to be crystal clear that this part of the forum was only a discussion area for the customer ideas, not a place where any commitment about the inclusion of such features would be made.
Would other find this of interest/value even with the sort of restrictions and understanding set out above?
Iain