On 25/10/2013 3:32 a.m., Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
I cannot speak for other free (as in freedom) software, but the deal is simple: programmers do what they can and scratch their own itches, either because they need a feature or they want to implement it, and users do what they want and scratch their own itches by sending bug reports. Their is nothing more in the implied contract. We do have 10 years old bugs in LyX; it is not only because we do not care about them, but many of them require work that is difficult to get right. For example, we will have one of these 10-year-old bugs fixed due to a Google Summer of Code project, and I can say I am very happy about that. That said, I have to admit that there are bugs I have no interest in fixing. The magic of open source is that, if the bug is important enough, it should annoy one of the developers and it will eventually get fixed. About the way bugs are labeled, I can tell you that "regression" is a very important term for us. We do not let such bugs linger too long. In the opposite, a bug accompanied by a comment like "OMG LYX IS WORTHLESS DUE TO THIS BUG" is not likely to get much attention. That's how it works. We don't owe you anything, you don't owe us anything either, but by some mystery the ecosystem is viable. JMarc
I like this, last paragraph especially. Thank you. Andrew
