On 10/24/13 8:32 AM, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
24/10/2013 15:59, Ken Springer:
There is also the segment of the open source area where they actively
ask you to file bugs that can be fixed. Then the bugs just sit there,
never getting fixed. If you aren't going to actively fix the bugs, then
don't ask for help in identifying those bugs. This is the "non
professional" attitude I'm talking about. Even worse are the developers
who say this and also say they want to compete against a commercial
product.
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.
Just a question, does viable equate something that will be successful in
the long run?
--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 24.0
Thunderbird 17.0.8
LibreOffice 4.1.1.2
