Hi Andi,
IMHO the OS/2 - eCS community is special compared to others in the way what they expect from there system/apps. An average Linux guy usually tries things out, plays with software, read numerous hours in the net about problems he encounters and sometimes even start to improve the sources. An average OS/2 - eCS guy expects perfect software focused on the task he needs to be done.
There is also a core difference in the platforms. While Linux is a free platform and the open source philosophy is one if the important features and the base of all, eCs is a commercial platform! And paying some hundred bucks for a OS results in higher expectations. So easy. An eCs customer thinks his money is used to develop things and he doesn't do it self. On Linux you know you pay nothing so you can ask for or you do it yourself. Linux doesn't owe you anything but when I buy eCs than it owes what is promised. Promises - that is another story....
And eCs has a Os2 history and people don't like it when new versions are not as good working as older ones.
The funny thing is that lot of things working better on the free platform than the closed source commercial platform and at the end Martin is right with his Open Source points.
One problem of eCs is also that Mensys is drawing a picture of this OS in our mind. A picture of a commercial OS compared with Win or OSX - working great and everywhere. The power client for inet generation. They don't talk about what is going on. There is no dialog between users and project leaders, there are no polls to get a clue about what users really want. There is more a feeling that end users better be quiet because there are bigger fishes to catch. There is also deny of technical facts (e.g. Sigurd did things Mensys declared as impossible before and even after he did it).
There is no transparency about the development and progress - what the heck are blogs for.
There is no call for help and there is no statement about to less time or a description of problems to keep the picture of a very good working and selling 'better than the years before' operating system somewhere in our mind but the result is in the contrary.
And actually a lot of things are more like on free platforms. E.g. we have a lot of volunteers working for eCs. So eCs is some kind of mix between open source and commercial platform. This get even more disappointing when users see that they buy a product and it includes wide range of free software. You can do this a company but then you need transparency about the things you develop yourself and clarify what users exactly pay for and expose advantages.