Miles Fidelman wrote:
Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
Rufus wrote:
»Q« wrote:
In <news:1b2dnxuuo8asgchjnz2dnuu7-xodn...@mozilla.org>,
Rufus <n...@home.com> wrote:
[about communication wrt level of support for different platforms]
Be professional. That's all I really want.
Clearly, you have a vision of a much more "professional" SeaMonkey
organization. But IME, telling a community of F/LOSS volunteers what
they should do, without doing any of it yourself, is a lot like farting
in the wind. Maybe you could open a dialog with the people who build
the releases and type up what you learn about multi-platform support in
a clear, "professional" manner?
Anyone that posts feedback is a "volunteer". We all do it.
If one wants to get paid, one should get a paying job. Otherwise, if
you're doing it for the sheer love of doing it, then do the best you can
and stop whining about being a "volunteer".
There's a big difference in what one can demand of a paid employee and
what one can demand of a volunteer. Volunteers donate their time as a
gift that is not mandatory, so the recipient cannot reasonably impose
conditions on the nature and manner of that donation. If one tries,
one will just drive them away. A volunteer who says, "don't push me!"
is warning against crossing that line, and a recipient who complains
about "whining" is showing ingratitude for the gift and disrespect for
the donor.
Bottom line: if one is not paying for it, one is not entitled to
anything. So one should ask nicely or STFU.
Well, that's the dilemma of FOSS projects - long term "professionalism"
and "stewardship" of the project. Some efforts - the Apache HTTPd
Daemon, and the Linux kernel come to mind, as do Sendmail, Postfix,
PostGress - embody a strong, on-term commitment to a quality piece of
software, with quality support; other projects do not. Sometimes it
involves creating a formal organization, perhaps with some funding and
paid staff, or contribution of time by commercial entities with a vested
interest. Sometimes it's through donations.
Clearly Firefox and Thunderbird are actively maintained by the Mozilla
Foundation, which promises a level of maintenance and professionalism -
and it is reasonable to expect as much (particularly if one donates to
the Foundation). SeaMonkey, on the other hand, is essentially
abandonware, that has been picked up as a "community project," only
nominally under the aegis of the Mozilla Foundation. And the cracks in
that model are starting to show - pieces of the code that aren't
maintained at all (e.g, Composer), bugs that never get fixed, the
recurring problems with each new release.
While I'm sure we all appreciate the volunteer efforts of maintainers -
it does seem that more and more people are abandoning SeaMonkey, and it
might be reasonable to start asking - is it time for a new model for
long term support?
I've read enough gripes here to know SeaMonkey's not perfect (no program
of any size is), but I've liked it well enough for long enough that I
want to stick with it; I'll only leave if I'm forced out. I've used lots
of commercial software that was much worse, so money alone is not the
answer.
Even so, I think SeaMonkey deserves better, and I hope the organizers
will find a way to get it the support it deserves. The volunteers who
are keeping it up clearly agree that it's worthwhile, and I'm glad they
do. That's why I donate what time and expertise I have to offer.
--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
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