This is spot on. When you hear NetBSD developers arguing about proposals (or commits, ex post facto, like here), there is often mention of "users". But these are mostly fictional.
I think this is true of much open source software. Just for the sake of example, a few years ago the Gnome devs removed some printer config options because they decided the "users" didn't need so many options. It's not that Gnome doesn't have users, but the developers seemed to have some notion of a type of user that didn't really exist.
I think more often than not, fictional users are used as justification for the addition of some nice-to-have feature, but of course I'm just speculating.
I think this is true of much open source software. Just for the sake of example, a few years ago the Gnome devs removed some printer config options because they decided the "users" didn't need so many options. It's not that Gnome doesn't have users, but the developers seemed to have some notion of a type of user that didn't really exist.
I think more often than not, fictional users are used as justification for the addition of some nice-to-have feature, but of course I'm just speculating.