Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : Randy Howard Date : Fri Aug 26 2005 08:04 pm Rob Thorpe wrote (in article <1125076361.089120.125250@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>): > Randy Howard wrote: >> Chris Sonnack wrote >> (in article ): >> >>> If anything, I believe that as software development achieves its >>> rightful recognition in society, if anything, the trend will be >>> towards commercialization and applied quality standards and away >>> from the idea of "free". >> >> I think you are quite correct here, as we have discussed this >> need for quality standards as in other more established >> professions here before. >> >> I suspect this is the real underlying motive of the 'free' >> movement, as they want to prevent this from happening. They >> want it to be completely unregulated, with no individual >> responsible for anything, but a large 'community' of relatively >> anonymous contributors that can't be touched in any legal sense. > > Most programmers who write free-software seem to be much more > interested in quality than those who write proprietry software. Interesting. That could be true for a number of reasons, including the much larger experience you might have had with commercial software over the last nn years, a sampling of particularly bad vendors (like Microsoft). Yes, I know Microsoft has some cool products, but for support, especially highly technical support for developers, they fall quite short in my opinion. This may have suddenly changed in the last few years or so since I stopped wasting money on MSDN and started working on cross-platform or other platform development exclusively. > I've > submitted bug reports on many proprietry programs and recieved no > response, or a curt response dismissing it as a personal problem of my > setup. I have too. I have also had minimal responses to similar inquiries about open source projects, or they almost trademarked response of "It's open source, fix it yourself". In more than a few cases I did that, because it was the only option available. > I've had this treatment even for companies my employer spends > thousands of pounds per year on for "support". Same here. I can also tell you that I have had very, very good technical relationships with commercial software companies, but typically not the very large ones. I think the issue you refer to has more to do with company size and bureaucracy than open versus closes or commercial versus free. For example, *any* time I ever had any kind of complaint or inquiry about a new feature, etc. come in from the field on one of my projects, it automatically went to the top of my list. It frequently meant 'overtime' (being salary that didn't really mean much to me, not being a clock-watcher like most modern 'software engineers' that pretend they are hourly employees). I took such reports (or requests for new features) quite seriously, and would fix them, literally, before I went home after hearing of them. I can think of only one example of a feature request that came in from the field that was quite a good idea, but not something that had been in the original design, which took longer than that to address. I basically wound up (after convincing myself) having to run around to others and convince them too, and making some more extensive changes to the overall design to get it in without applying duct tape, and it made it into the next major release, which was soon approaching. > I've also submitted > many bug reports on free programs and only once not recieved a > response. In most case I've recieved a fix. You must have never used an open source project where the developer has disappeared, but left the source behind, the geek equivalent of an archaelogical dig. This wouldn't be so bad if open source programmers (in general) were as consistent about commenting their code and using meaningful names in their source as most commercial code I have seen. > I think a large part of this is that in free/open software the > programmer name is on the product. Whereas in proprietry software > he/she is most often anonymous. That may very well be true, but it didn't work out that way for me. I took every project I worked on 'personally'. I didn't want to 'ship it' to get it out the door, I wanted it to be right. In some cases this caused people in sales and marketing heartburn, especially when they wanted to slam down some t-minus 24 hours last minute feeping creaturism on the feature list. In some cases it meant I put in a lot of hours instead to avoid missing a schedule. >> The cost of being a certified professional in a legitimate field >> is very high, and it doesn't meet the basically anti-capitalist >> mentality of those involved. > > Why do people think those involved are necessarily anti-capitalist? It might have something to do with the behavior of those that they hold up as dieties. Something about having their exalted leaders compare commercial software developers to murderers might be involved. :-) > Anyway, it's not necessarily costly. It isn't costly to be a certified > EE for example. Sure it is. You have to first /be/ an EE. A very large percentage of open source programmers have little or no college education, or it is in an unrelated field. Try being a certified brain surgeon. If programmers can work on systems for automobiles, airplanes, nuclear reactors, etc., it is at least as dangerous if they screw up as if your foot doctor does a bad job on an ingrown toenail. Guess which one has to carry malpractice insurance? -- Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR) .