Easily doesn't mean a sysadmin for a day. Easily means not having to invest considerable man-power into making cvs and diff and branches and IDE integration and nightly building and whatnot work together. YMMV for the definition of considerable.
I more than agree with you on the other points you raise. (As for shouting for a clearcase license, we had a shortage of CC licenses and a coworker who you could call a Loud Howard... funny story, really...) Shachar Tal Verint Systems > -----Original Message----- > From: Nadav Har'El [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 5:45 PM > To: Tal, Shachar > Cc: 'Gilad Ben-Yossef'; Guy Teverovsky; Linux-IL mailing > list; 'Shachar Shemesh' > Subject: Re: Version control (was: Re: What's wrong with this code?) > > > On Tue, Nov 18, 2003, Tal, Shachar wrote about "RE: Version > control (was: Re: What's wrong with this code?)": > > If only the small integratable single-minded tools were *easily* > > integratable, I suspect Rational would have gone of > business a few years > > ago. > > Why do they need to be "easily" integratable? What if it will > take your > sysadmin a whole day to do this integration? And what if you > pay a services > company (like IBM previously mentioned in this thread) to > provide you with > a turnkey solution? Nobody said ever said that every user > should need to > install and configure free software on his/her own. > > You might ask, "well, if it costs me money, why is the > free-software solution > any different from the propriatry one?" Well, there's a big > difference. > The free software solution won't charge you by user (haven't you ever > seen developers shout across the open space "please log out > of the version > control software, I need a license!"?). The free software > solution will > still be available when you decide to switch to a different > platform, CPU, > or operating system. If a bug in the program seriously annoys > you, you can > hire someone to fix it for you (with commercial software, > you'll need to > beg the manufacturer to fix it or give you partial sources.) > > Note, however, that some special scenarios - like 100 people working > full-time on a single huge code - are simply not useful in > the free software > world, which is why you don't see free software catering to > those needs. > Also, free software tends to cater to the needs of people who write it > (namely, developers) rather than managers and so on. The > managers sometimes > don't like it. For example, in a previous workplace I was > asked to switch > from Bugzilla to a commercial bug tracking software (that was > "integrated" > with the version control system). It was horrible - while > bugzilla allowed > me a lot of freedom and a lot of power (to discuss bugs with > others, to > pass bugs between developers), the commercial one was very > rigid and very > manager-oriented (most of the decisions required manager > rights to be done, > it was impossible to write comments on bugs, etc.). For me > (and some other > developers), the commercial solution was simply WORSE than > the free software > one. But it wasn't us making the decision of which software > to use - it > was the managers, and to them the commercial software was > more appealing. > > And if you think that free software is hard to integrate, > wait till you > here this: while Bugzilla was useful to us out-of-the-box, > the commercial > product had so many problems that we couldn't use it until one person > worked on it for nearly a month (!) tweaking the myriad of > scripts, parameters > and other crap that came with it. So much for easy > integration... And at > no point did anyone stop to ask "why are we paying thousands > of dollars > for this crap?" > > > -- > Nadav Har'El | Tuesday, Nov 18 > 2003, 23 Heshvan 5764 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > |----------------------------------------- > Phone: +972-53-790466, ICQ 13349191 |And now for some feedback: > http://nadav.harel.org.il |EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE > This electronic message contains information from Verint Systems, which may be privileged and confidential. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual(s) or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify us by replying to this email. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
