Quoting "Aécio F. Neto" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

>>> Is there any reason Clam are incapable of stabilising on a configuration
>>> format
>>>
>>
>> No, they are quite capable of doing this, but the choose not to.  That
>> is their right and privilege.  And doing so might slow or stop progress.

Note, I was just answering his question.  I'm not saying I support this
position.

> IMHO, this is one of the reasons free software doesn't go to the masses.

Some does.  Most doesn't.  The level of support varies greatly between
projects.

> I have worked in both worlds - proprietary and free software - and this
> last one lacks in many aspects that proprietary code takes care of:
> being friendly.

I've used proprietary, commercial, stable release software were both
the software and the company behind it are anything but friendly.

I've used free software where the software and the people behind it
were very friendly (though, okay, that is a rare thing).

> There is a myth in free software that who is going to use that is (or
> should be) highly technical, so who cares about being nice. This is
> almost a rule for software mainly used by sys admins.

There is also a rule that people running critical production servers for
others should indeed be highly technical.  Now, if you want to run it
as a hobbiest, or for personal use, that is different.  But if you are
running this as a professional service, then you should follow professional
standards, and that usually means being technically competent.

> I have seem many nice software (clamav is one of them) that the
> technical skill inside it (its core) is great, but when it comes to the
> user interface it is always a nightmare.

This holds for free and commercial software.

> When someone complains about that, there is always a scream in the
> crowd: hey, this is free software - people dedicating their free time...
> - what are you expecting? A Windows-way of doing things? Why don't you
> write your own gui?

No one has yelled that in this argument so far, I don't recall at least.
The argument is about production versus pre-production code, not about
free versus commercial code.

-- 
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

Go Longhorns!
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