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Re: setup.exe is too small


On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

Robert Collins wrote:

>> On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 10:02, Andrew DeFaria wrote:
>
>>>> Christopher Faylor wrote
>>
>>>>>> And, different agendas as well. No one in free software has to work
>>>>>> on things that they don't want to work on.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And, the theory that "You know how to do it. You're doing all this
>>>>>> other stuff, why don't you do this too?" doesn't really sound right
>>>>>> to me.
>>
>>>> Chris do not view this as a justification for a "consumer" to demand
>>>> that a "producer" work for him. Rather I was trying to point out why
>>>> a "consumer" or a "semi-hacker" for that matter, might be reluctanct
>>>> to dive into a dev/patch project that they might view "over there head".
>
>> If they aren't willing to dive in,

The word was reluctant not unwilling.

>> then they still have options other than asking for charity...
>>
>> *) Contribute something for the feature. I.e. 'I'll write up a web
>> page detailing how to use various aspects of setup, IF you will make
>> the chooser resizable for me'.

OK - I'll write up a web page detailing how to use various aspects of
setup, IF you will make the chooser resizable for me.

>> *) Contract someone else to implement the feature for them. "I'll put
>> $20 into a pool for the programmer that completes the feature".

I don't have a spare $20 to put into a pool but I'll put in my vote. Is
that good enough? :-)

>>>> IOW I don't think that just because it's Open Source and you *can*
>>>> fix it yourself, that a flippant "Fix it yourself!" response is
>>>> warranted.
>
>> Conversely, neither is "Fix it for me!".

Isn't one of the tenents of Open Source that the developer typically
prides themselves on their code and therefore is quicker to fix bugs and
address problems in their products? You see to me this is one of the
falacys of the Open Source movement - that the producers will care
enough and have enough time to address such problems. As we can see this
is not always the case. From the view point of the consumer Open Source
is often not workable.

Andrew,


If you read the GNU page on "Free Software", you'll see that "Free" in its
name does not refer to "cost", but rather to "freedom".

<http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#TANSTAAFL>.  You have to pay for the software
you use; if not in money, then in contributions or time spent dealing with
unfixed bugs or even simply respect to the developer.  Contributions make
the developer's work easier, and the rest makes her life easier by not
getting duplicate bug reports, or not getting an "Are we there yet"
whine from people when he has to take the time to do her primary job.

I'm not saying that bug reports aren't useful, or that developers
shouldn't be pinged from time to time (especially when they asked to be),
but otherwise a developer has to get paid, and he often doesn't get
anything from his project (unless he's sponsored, which is a whole other
can of worms).

All in all, developers of Cygwin in particular are maintaining their
packages in their [copious] spare time, and to demand that something be
done "right now" because someone can't use their package is, to say the
least, unreasonable, IMO.
	Igor
P.S. This is not a flame, and shouldn't be regarded as such.
--
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
     |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor at watson dot ibm dot com
    |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
   '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

Oh, boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a really *big* RAMdisk!
 -- /usr/games/fortune


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