On 10/24/13 4:38 AM, Steve Litt wrote:
On Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:31:48 -0600
Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote:
On 10/23/13 2:31 PM, Richard Talley wrote:
Interesting comments. I too have found small vendors to be much more
helpful. Often the developers help with or even do all of the tech
support at small vendors. And they actually read my emails, instead
of replying with canned responses.
Most of the time, you can't get help from the big guys, really pisses
me off.
If it pisses you off, then as Vincent van Ravesteijn said, don't use
it. Use proprietary software, with their official support channels
(often for limited time or costing money) full of script-reading ignos
escalating to other script reading ignos.
It appears you also misinterpreted the post. It was generalized, and
not specific to LyX.
Product support, customer service, in general, sucks. Online, offline,
commercial, open source, just about everywhere. For software these
days, you are supposed to join a forum. If I went back through all my
forum posts asking for help, I think I'd be lucky to find 10% of them
have had answers to my questions.
But, there are exceptions. With one problem I had with a Windows
security update, I was on the phone, more than once, with a support
engineer in New Delhi.
Earlier in this thread someone implied that some Open Source projects
are "unprofessional". Well yeah, surprise surprise, Open Source isn't
most developers' profession: It doesn't pay the rent. You want
professional, go to those who make their money by charging you for
software. If you want good software with excellent support for those who
know how to ask questions and behave on a mailing list, stay with Open
Source.
That was me, and as I hope I cleared up in a post somewhere, I was
speaking about attitudes more than the software.
You don't have to make money to have a professional attitude about your
work.
It's funny. In February 2008 I got royally pissed at what I considered
bad support from the LyX community, so I started designing a
book-writing software alternative to LyX, using VimOutliner, LaTeX, and
a few other things. There's a long, rich tradition in free software that
if you don't like their support or their progress adding features, you
fork their project.
From what I've read about LyX, it's used by many college students in
the math and science's department. Am I to presuppose all the students
have the programming skills to fix issues that are broken, don't work,
or what ever is not working right?
But you know what never occurred to me? Going with
Page Plus, Microsoft Publisher, or InDesign. Here are just a few
reasons these alternatives never occurred to me:
Page Plus I've never tried, used Publisher in the mid-90's for a work
project, found it lacking in comparison to another DTP package I was
familiar with. FYI, had no option in the choice of software. InDesign
I'd never heard of until a few weeks ago.
* http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
I read this months ago, but as part of a thread somewhere on government
overreach.
* http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200104/200104.htm#_editors_desk
I like the opening of your article, but don't have the time to get
through it today. I'm still trying to get to an article on the 9th
Amendment to Constitution I started reading last week.
* http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-continues-to-fail-7000016222/
Of this I'm not surprised. I read alt.comp.os.windows-8 and most are
not that happy with Win 8. I've got it installed here to "play" with.
I think it should be good for tablets and smart phones, but not desktops
with big screens and people/groups who want a system that's efficient to
navigate and use.
One exception to the big screen comment may be places like restaurants,
where a Point of Sale use may be good. The waitstaff of a restaurant
simply touches the screen to place a customer's order, for instance.
*http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240185097/Microsofts-Windows-81-update-fails-to-deliver
Debating on upgrading my 8.0 install. Only one is legal, so I'm
thinking of buying a retail 8.1 copy.
There's something that doesn't make sense to me: Why does someone go on
the mailing list of an Open Source project and diss Open Source? I diss
Windows all the time, but I don't do it on ##windows. I diss Apple all
the time, but I don't do it in Apple User Groups. I diss OpenOffice all
the time, but not on an OpenOffice mailing list.
Feel free to call it a "diss", I call it freedom to express an opinion.
It all depends on how you say it. Make it personal to an individual,
no. Make it an opinion about a product, group, etc., OK.
If you don't express your opinion of X in an area for X, you do X no
favors. You become:
1. The opposite of a politician who only tells the constituent what the
constituent wants to hear.
2. The group becomes the merchant who never finds out there are
problems with the business that need addressing.
3. You become the user who never offers anything that fixes or
identifies
an issue with the product.
As George Bernard Shaw said, "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the
world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All
progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."
Another puzzler: someone has a problem with a single LaTeX package,
generalizes it to all Open Source (except LyX), and then somehow turns
that into "why people give up on open source software", as if there's
some kind of mass exodus from Open Source. How does THAT work? My
observation is that Open Source is gaining mindshare and usage pretty
much continuously.
I can't speak for Rich, but it was not my intent to leave an impression
of "mass exodus". Just my pulling back from the potential promise I saw
that open source has, but IMO is not doing a good job of meeting. I
think Canonical is making that effort, but I have no feel as to their
success. Someday, when I'm rich but not famous, and have the time, I
really want to try Linux. Personally, I don't care for the direction MS
and Apple are going with the operating systems. AKA, I'm not a cloud
fan and a devotee of the cloud idea for personal use.
I see an opportunity for open source to be a real contender/option to be
an alternative to MS and Apple for the users. I think this should be
obvious with the success of the Android/Linux based phones. I am a fan
of competition, of which there is little today. But I think the
attitudes of many in the open source community may be undermining that
opportunity.
I leave you with one more article I often think of when reading threads
like this:
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/23/news/mn-37472
I'm not surprised. The only way to resolve this, IMO, is to get the
ordinary/average user to leave what they know and are familiar with to
move to something different. Where you move has to provide something
better than where you are coming from. If it doesn't, it won't happen.
Those that move will be the people who just want to use the programs,
not write and fix them. And that's where I have ended up. I want to
use the software, not write and fix. I'm more than happy to file a
bug/report an issue if:
1. The reporting system is easy to use.
2. I'm made to feel the time and effort I put into the reporting is
appreciated.
3. The issue is resolved so I can use the program.
--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 24.0
Thunderbird 17.0.8
LibreOffice 4.1.1.2
