Alexandro Colorado wrote:
I take your point that you don't like my attitude towards those in
question. Fair enough. Similarly, I don't like the attitudes of those
who choose to use OpenOffice not because it's open-source, but because
they don't have to pay for it, and then have the audacity to demand
features or they'll " ... go back to MS Office, so help me God!".
I'm not sure who you are talking about here, but I for one have never
"demanded", not even close. I think it would be a Good Thing(tm) if OOo
had an Outlook/Evolution style PIM, because there is a fair amount of
user demand/interest and it would speed adoption in many circles,
particularly the corporate/government markets where I thought we were
trying to push ODF. That's not the same thing as demanding that the
developers drop everything and write the thing from scratch next week.
Hell, I don't even use a PIM that much.
Nice quip about me going to work for Microsoft though. Caught me
off-guard!
This discussions sounds like a patient arguing with a doctor, while the
doctor tell them what they have inside and reasons of what they have
inside. The patient will argue with arguments such as it hurt me on the
lower part of my arm without understanding much of what the doctor say.
This is the same issue with developers and end users triying to come to
reason.
There's a more fundamental problem here. I don't think the open-source
"community" has really figured out how to deal effectively with end
users. This isn't like the good old days that ESR describes in CATB
where you had programmers producing code for consumption by fellow
programmers and the primary recompense was prestige among their fellows.
Your comparison with the doctor-patient relationship is particularly
apt. There is a very real power relationship at work here. As a
non-programmer consumer of open-source you are basically reduced to
humbly pleading, and if your request annoys the programmer god then you
get put in your place like a puppy getting smacked with a newspaper for
peeing on the carpet. I've seen some pretty big egos among O/S developers.
In comparison, just going out and buying software can seem positively
dignified, even empowering. Because in the proprietary marketplace you
normally have a number of vendors competing for your business. If a
demand (in the economic sense) exists for a particular feature or
functionality then someone *will* step up to supply that demand, and it
will happen with a sense of industry and urgency because supplying that
demand means more customers which means more profit$. With O/S it seems
more like, When we feel like it, when we get around to it, if it
interests us.
But what really gets my goat is when people want to inject a moral
component into it, like you're some sort of sinner for using closed
source software. To those folks I want to say, "Where the hell were you
when we needed you?" When IBM introduced the PC back about 20 years ago,
the *nix crowd was too busy playing with their big iron to be bothered
to port a Unix to that architecture. And when they finally did, it was
proprietary and cost something like $10K per copy. When Linus started
his project in '91 the world was already using Windows 3.1. Finally,
some twenty years after the 8088 came out, we now have an open source
operating system that ordinary folks can begin to think about using.
*If* they can get their hardware to work right, and *if* they're willing
to use apps that are mostly 5-10 years behind the proprietary competition.
So is this problem just too hard for open-source to deal with? I mean
there have been proprietary PIMs forever. Outlook/Exchange, Lotus Notes,
and probably a dozen or more smaller entries. I was using a shareware
product called Time and Chaos over ten years ago and I still haven't
seen an open source product that can match it even now.
In case you haven't caught on yet, I'm getting a bit disillusioned with
the whole deal. I'm getting tired of waiting years for something that's
"just around the corner". I'm getting tired of being scolded for daring
to ask a question or challenging an answer that clearly doesn't make any
sense. I'm getting tired of the ridiculous concept that something is
simultaneously superior and "good enough". I have a hard time lending
credence to the claim that the O/S development process is so superior
while at the same time observing that most of the products of that
process are themselves inferior.
End users see the blinking lights and developers see the actual
processes. That is why we haven't come and will never come to an
understandment. However this is where the Marketing project need to step
forward since is the bridge for translating the message to end users. I
think this is what they ought to be doing and come with a solution once
and for all. Once said that this is the discuss list where this
discussions happen everyday without lookng back.
It's going to take more than marketing. That's a M$ tactic. It's going
to take a serious re-examination of the processes themselves --
development, management, and decision-making. Because it's either an
industry, in which case you have to listen to and satisfy consumer
demand, or it's a hobby and you're just playing with yourself.
--
Rod
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