On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 20:05:16 +0100 "M. Fioretti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "I've found this bug in OO.o, please fix it soon, as it is it makes my > work so much slower and we can't afford proprietary SW". Imagine how > idiotic it would have been to say "please fix this yourself if it > bothers you so much, here's the source". > > Obviously, I'm no Mother Teresa by any stretch of the imagination, but > as long as my infinitely smaller gifts allow it, I volunteer to both > the Free SW and the general human community. And I *have* to use > Linux, Apache, Gnome things, KDE things, OO.o and lots of other > software to volunteer for the community. But in OTHER projects. And > that leaves NO time for me to do something which I would'nt be able to > do anyway. That's why "we the volunteer community" "given enough eyes > all bugs are shallow" and similar dogmas aren't valid anymore. Really, I don't understand your point. Continuing your example, why in this "perfect" world should Mother Teresa's bug be more important than Pope John Paul II's one or mine? Maybe has whatever user's bug or feature request a first degree priority? Is whatever user an "average" user whose needs we have to fulfil? I have already suggested a professional approach with an analysis and an action plan before simply saying those ideas aren't valid anymore. In any other case, yours are simple opinions. I respect them, but I don't agree. Of course, you cannot have time or skills to do everything in every project around the world, but you can pay for having it done, you can find another volunteer who can do it, you can simply spread the voice that that project you really like needs help to fix that bad bug... It's what I did with the Italian spellchecker. I need it and there's none, so I did it. Then, I understood I can't do it alone, so I found Davide Prina who was able to use database in a professional way and we put the dictionary in a postgreSQL db. Then, we understood we cannot check the meaning of more than 130.000 words alone, so we did a call for volunteers and we got more than 40 of them. Then, the thesaurus needed a more structured organization than what single volunteers can do, so we have collaborated with an high school in Bologna who did the work during their lessons. Then, we (well, Davide Prina... ;-) have realized a thesaurus' work could not be done in a single city and decide to create an on-line tool to have contributions from the web. Then... This is the spirit of collaboration. Sure, collaboration sometimes needs incentives (read: money) but it's normal. Foundation and non profit organization pay some of their employees, right? I think you and maybe Andrew Brown too have a naive conception of "given enough eyes all bugs are shallow". Or, more realistically, that "dogma" has developed itself since '80ies and has to be interpreted in a less naive way. It's likely that sentence nowadays and in larger projects cannot be referred to individuals, but to groups of individuals or organizations (corporations, foundations and groups of volunteers who collaborate inside the same project) However, I think we are talking about the same thing by using different words. :) 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]
