On Tue Oct 31, 2000 at 03:25:22PM -0800, Mandrake Bugs wrote:
> >> 1. We has to put out this version due to very tight time schedule: WalMart
> >> doesn't want any new products on the shelves from 1st of november,
> >> until mid january.
>
> Ah yes, very similar to Microsoft's marketing based on retail figures
> 'quality control' system.
>
> Sad development, but Mandrake is becoming more and more like Microsoft.
This is disgusting. Think about what you're saying here. We're
comparing a small company of just over 100 employees to a software
monopoly. If anyone can afford to ignore marketing time tables for
stable products, it should be Microsoft.
You know, it's all nice and dandy that people say that MandrakeSoft
should not release a product with bugs in it but, realistically, that
will never happen. Unless you want us to turn into Debian, but even
there they have bugs and they have got to be one of the slowest
forward-moving distributions around.
If you want a quality release, MandrakeSoft can, will, and *has*
provided one. There is no question that Linux Mandrake is a
top-quality distribution. Solitary cases aside, I'm sure you will
find that most people are satisfied and happy with Mandrake.
Unfortunately, people don't realize that all 100+ employees of
MandrakeSoft need to eat as well and not all of us can work for free
to create this quality distribution for you. In order for us to eat
and not find jobs that pay real money, MandrakeSoft needs to sell
copies of the distribution. And if this means providing KDE 2.0 RC
which works almost identical to 2.0 final (both of which have bugs,
BTW, and not caused by us either) because we have a schedule so we can
sell our favourite distribution so that people can give it to each
other for Christmas, then please understand that we do this for two
reasons. The first is because we have an obligation to the people we
do business with, and the second is that we need to be able to
generate some revenue so that we can continue to work on this. And
that has nothing to do with retail figures either.
I'm all for free software and top quality no bugs productions, but I
also prefer to live in real life and not someone's pipe dream.
Instead of spending time criticizing us for what we do and comparing
us unfairly to a giant software monopoly, try to understand that we
only want to make the best distro for you and ourselves (remember, we
use Mandrake too!) but we must have the resources in order to do so.
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