Michael Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> Then i wonder if this is the correct forum for your query? It's not really a query. I'm thinking out loud. Ian Lynch made some good points about OSS applications best understood as a strategic collaboration between behemoths like IBM and SUN. But that's not how Eric Raymond would see it. > Is there > anything we could say that would convince you. What are you trying to convince me of? I think it's obvious to anyone that such ideas as "with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" is something between wildly misleading and utter crap. It certainly doesn't apply to OOo. Assume, for the sake of argument, that OOo's Marketing project own figure of 50m users is accurate. Of these 50m, at most 500 can have contributed to the program -- that's the figure of people who signed the JCA. As I know, signing the JCA doesn't actually make you a programmer. I'd be surprised if more than 200 people had ever contributed code, and if more than 10 of them were not paid, full-time by their employers to do so. That's not an impressive figure over five years. Ten volunteer developers is fewer, perhaps, than you'd get on the average sourceforge project. It's not surprising that there are currently 6030 defects open in the project, and a further 5506 requests for enhancements. (There are, incidentally, 21180 issues marked as "fixed") OK -- so there aren't very many programmers in the world with the necessary skills and interests. But the other thing we have learnt in the last five years is that most users, so far from being able to fix bugs, can't even identify them. We all know what a nightmare it is to navigate Issuezilla, and how few of the reports on these lists make it in there. The QA volunteers -- before you ask, I am one, too -- struggle with a mountain of crud in their limited spare time. And they are quite simply overwhelmed. With enough eyeballs, you see so many bugs you might as well be having the DTs. > Perhaps you should just > sit back and watch events as a social experiment. -- Andrew Brown The email in the header does not work. Contact details and possibly useful macros from http://www.darwinwars.com/lunatic/bugs/oo_macros.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
