How do I get something changed in Free & Open Source Software (FOSS)?

Proprietary, Commercial Software

With proprietary, commercial software, new features and bug fixes can only really be implemented if the owner of that software decides to do so. This puts the user in the role of negotiating with the company that controls the software. For example, a customer could tell the software company that continued purchases of their products or subscriptions to their services are dependent on a specific feature being implemented.

This can be quite effective for large, influential customers. In a previous product manager role I held, a portion of our development roadmap could be reserved for features needed only by our "flagship" customer - the one with enough industry prestige to make anyone say "oh, they use this software? It must be good." Smaller customers or individuals, however, often find themselves at the mercy of their larger peers' preferences. Their account reps commonly communicate the flagship-influenced design as the "best practice", and can be reluctant to make serious internal pushes for their customers' requests knowing that they're unlikely to be highly prioritized.

The upshot is, unless your purchasing decisions can significantly sway the financial outlook of the company/department that makes the software, you have very limited options to impact its development. Achieving what you want with your device might end up requiring switching software packages entirely, or even building brand-new, from scratch solutions in house.

The FOSS Difference

The code availability and guaranteed legal freedoms of FOSS mean that even a "closed off" development process, with source code only shared at the end, doesn't stop others from modifying the program to meet a unique need. In reality, many FOSS projects eagerly accept outside contributions, whether the developers are self-motivated volunteers or sponsored to implement specific goals.

So having said that, if you're a user of a FOSS project's work and want to see something change - whether that's a feature you really want, or a fix for a bug that's impacting your work, you have quite a few options!

The options that I'm aware of are listed below, in decreasing order of how viable I think each is:

• Build it Yourself: Explore the existing code, figure out how to implement what you want, and - if it doesn't break other use cases - submit it to the project as a pull request! (Even if it does break other uses, you can still build the software locally with your patch!)
• Sponsor the Work: Find a developer who is knowledgeable about the software you're using, or at least about the programming languages and toolkits/frameworks it's built with, and pay them to modify the software to do what you want.
• Persuade Developers: Provide well-formatted feature requests or bug reports to the developers who are already contributing to that software project, convincing them that the work you want done is beneficial for them as well, and/or helps them meet their broader goals for the project.
• Complain to Developers: Use official communication channels, like project message boards, mailing lists, or chat rooms, to complain about the project's lack of the feature that you want.
• Complain to the Void: Post on Reddit that "DAE [project name] needs [thing I want]?"