On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 14:00:53 +0000 Enrique Castro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I don't think we are talking in the sphere of Pure Logic. It is a > reasonable scientific procedure to take a significant and > representative example and trying to extract conclusions from that > (with all reserves about being a single example, not generalize > beyond facts etc). On the other hand, it is impossible to have _all_ > the knowledge and evidence, thys is a Logic myth. All progress in > knowledge is inductive (but falsable). I think we all agree that that > OOo is a very big project, and one very relevant for the acceptance > in use of FOSS. To analyze it and drive conclusions from it is not > bad logic. Uhm... I have to point out a thing: I'm a very pragmatic man and I have had a law education. Thus, as I've written to Marco, clues are not evidences for me. They can be used in discussions like these ones, but they have not any real validity when we want to confirm an assertion like: "The OpenOffice project vividly illustrates the limitations of open source as a way of producing software" Other comments about OOo follow below. > I think the main point in that article is in the title: > OpenOffice.org is buggy. I will say more, OOo 2.0 is much more buggy > than 1.1.x. Even, some design decisions for 2.0 have broken features > that worked well in 1.1.x. OOo 2.0 may be a significant step for > newcomers, making even easier to migrate from MS-Office, and as such, > a success. But for people that is using OOo from 1.0.x, I feel that > there is an increasing distance between user needs and project > management in the feature-request/bugfixing field. So OOo 2.0 has bugs. That is a fact, sure. And then? I've started to use OOo with a pre-1.0 Alpha (maybe m629 or something similar) and that was a *very* buggy version, OOo 1.0.2 too and for some people other versions may be very buggy for this or that reason. However, we should consider to do a real and large marketing research before talking about "increasing distance between user needs and project management in the feature-request/bugfixing field." There are feature requests and bug fixes that have been or are ignored, while other are satisfied. For example, Microsoft has recently announced the next version of their Office suite will include PDF exportation because their users have asked for it. Well, OOo is satisfying that need since years, so on this hand, the distance you were talking about doesn't exists. What I mean is this: before using personal or "niche" assumptions (per languages or per users group's perceptions, ...) in public texts that have a great resounding impact around the web, let's do thing in a professional way: 1) organize a real and large marketing analysis among users about QA and user needs. 2) prepare an action plan from the analysis' results 3) annoy 'till death the Council's members with that action plan 4) support your action plan with a coordinate lobbying group that includes resources (manpower and/or money) And if nothing works and no good reasons are given for that, then start to scream loudly, but with a reasoned and bullet-proof style. > As Marco Fioretti has pointed, these things must be said. These > things have been said in these lists, but they must be debated openly > in general newspapers too. Let do not add secrecy to bugs as others, > closed companies, may tend to do. Pointing out those problems is not > an attack to OOo but a way to make it ever healthier in the future. Please, stop! :) I've started this thread because Andrew Brown's article includes some wrong statements that are contrasting with declarations I do during my job activity. In addition to this, I have found Mr. Brown's article structure made as if he wanted to demonstrate the opening assumption "The OpenOffice project vividly illustrates the limitations of open source as a way of producing software". I don't want to go deeper into the deductive or inductive ways of common/pure Logic, otherwise many newcomers in this list may run away really, really fast. ;-) However, I'm still waiting an evidence that OOo 2.0 bugs are in some way related to the open source development method's failure. You, I and everyone can speak about OOo bugs in public or private discussion, but again, where it is written that an open source developer is more skilled than a proprietary one or that he/she will fix a bug in a better way? OOo bugs = open source method's failure is simply absurd, IMO. Development skills and engineering decisions comes well before the distribution/development method used for a software and influence the result, of course. In a project like OOo you must act on that level too. What I have read in Mr. Brown's article is an attempt to demolish open source "assumptions" (as he wrote) with other personal assumptions. Best Regards, Gianluca -- Il futuro, duro come non lo avreste mai immaginato: http://www.internetbookshop.it/ser/serdsp.asp?shop=1&c=KEE4YJPPYO3IO Volete scoprire cosa spinge una persona a divenire scrittore? "Sturm und Drang": http://www.lulu.com/content/116405 Vi domandate come sarà il futuro dell'Unione Europea tra vent'anni? "La fine del gioco": http://www.lulu.com/content/95804 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
