Forums have admins, moderators, posters, subscribers, lurkers.
Torrents have seeders, leechers.
None of these are customers.
Sure, Amazon has customers mostly, and some advertisers.
I would say it's not a reflection of distance of software developers, but more an attempt by developers to create a new all-encompassing term which describes all of these things. People, organizations, machines. More than one per real life unit.
Youtube has video uploaders, commenters, raters.
Games have players, coaches, referees, bots.
Forums have admins, moderators, posters, subscribers, lurkers.
Torrents have seeders, leechers.
None of these are customers.
Sure, Amazon has customers mostly, and some advertisers.
I would say it's not a reflection of distance of software developers, but more an attempt by developers to create a new all-encompassing term which describes all of these things. People, organizations, machines. More than one per real life unit.