Mail Archives: cygwin/2005/01/01/16:07:28
Brian Bruns wrote:
>>If you guys want cygwin to be used by real people, in real life
>>production or development environments, you should go a bit further
>>than "I don't have the problem on my computer, so fix it yourself".
>>If you don't want to or are not able to pay attention to "real
>>world" bugs, cygwin will probably never be more than an "almost
>>working" program that runs on your computer the time to take nice
>>screenshots, but fails miserably when users try to make it work in
>>the real life.
>>
>>
>>
>
><rant>
>I think you really really really need to reevaluate what you say
>before you hit send.
>
>The open source/free software developers that I communicate with/work
>with wrote the stuff they did because they needed an
>application/library/script for a specific need, and decided to release
>the software to the public in the hope that someone else might find it
>useful, and the hope that other people might contribute back.
>
>
That's exactly my point: what I was trying to say is that Cygwin wants
and deserves to be more than a project developped for a specific need
and released to the public "as is". An to be more than that, it needs to
have an active "technical support", that cannot expect users to fix bugs
by themselves.
>I feel the same way myself, and anytime someone tells me that what I
>work on is crap or sucks and they will never use it because it sucks,
>
>
I never, *never* said that Cygwin was crap. Cygwin is a really ambitious
project that provides a generic solution to all portablity problems
between Windows and *nix. And the fact that Cygwin is a wonderful tool
is the very reason why lots of people complain about the bugs: it is so
frustrating to have a "perfect" solution to a problem and to be unable
to use it because of a spurious, non deterministic bug.
I'm not at all opposed to help fixing this bug, and I'm already working
at gathering more information for a more complete bug report. I've had
my own load of 'mysterious' bugs and nights of bug hunting, so I
understand how hard and frustrating it can be to fix such a problem.
>I tell them this:
>
>You got the program from me for free. You are not my customer. You
>do not have a support contract with me. As such, I work on the
>projects when I can, and at the rate which I can afford. If you have
>a specific request, you can either fix it yourself, or you can
>compensate me for the time I spend making the changes you want if I
>don't have the ability to spare some free time.
>
>
In fact, Cygwin *does* sell licenses:
http://www.redhat.com/software/cygwin/ .
>
>What you consider 'real people' is obviously not the same type of
>people I consider 'real people'. I consider these 'real people' to be
>the individuals who are on this list, who work on the project, and who
>actively contribute to the project. You may use Cygwin, but until you
>start actively contributing to it, and helping the developers fix the
>bugs and such, you have no right to complain.
>
>I may not be an active contributor to Cygwin, but I do work alot with
>other OSS projects, and they get this same type of response from
>people too, and frankly, I'm sick of it.
>
></rant>
>
>
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