On 6 May 2000, Michael Harnois wrote:
> On Sat, 6 May 2000 12:31:00 +0100 (BST), Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> said:
>
> > I think its a bit much to berate someone for not supporting the
> > latest cutting edge snapshot.
>
> You manage to do it; I don't know why they can't.
Alan can do it because he's a cluster of massively parallel gnomes :-)
(Now, when do we get a cluster of KDEs joining in? :P)
> I'm always perplexed when someone involved in free software
> development finds it in his heart to leap to the defense of a
> commercial enterprise.
They aren't necessarily the enemy. On the Wine project in particular,
Corel have worked very closely and effectively on the project. I could
certainly imagine one of the Wine developers defending Corel.
> To me it's an open question whether commercial software companies can
> learn to function in sufficiently new ways to survive in the open
> software environment.
As with almost any change, some will survive, some won't. <Darwin> That's
how we make progress. </Darwin>
IBM, Corel and a few others seem perfectly capable of adapting. I don't
think we'll see Microsoft "opening up" any time soon; they never really
seemed flexible enough.
> I believe it requires a great deal more flexibility than most
> profit-making ventures have usually demonstrated. Put simply, I
> believe it would be reasonable to say "we'll have a fix in four days."
IBM have been doing that sort of thing for years - decades even. The
"customers are irrelevant... you will be adapted to suit our software"
approach is a more recent Microsoft-ism :-)
> It is not reasonable, and not an indication of the will to survive, to
> say "wait an indefinite period of time until the next release." I
> don't need another Microsoft in my life.
<shudder> Seconded! I can understand them not having a definite time frame
on some problems, but a progress indicator - ANY progress indicator, even
"it's worse than that Jim ... it'll have to wait until version 2" would be
better (IMO) than "erm ... yep, it'll get fixed. One day."
> What makes this particular case even more stupid is that Petr is
> working for VMware to do this support, and *is* very good and very
> timely; you just won't find out about that from them.
I always think a great measure of how good a company is is how well the
enthusiasm/ability of individual members of staff is reflected in the
overall company image. Some companies are much less than the sum of their
parts...
James.
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