Andrew Brown wrote:
Gianluca Turconi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in news:dnjv0v$gc9$2
@sea.gmane.org:
Of course, if you want to show to the readers the truth of an axiom
like: "Open Source as a way of producing software has limitations" you
can *show* examples, but you don't *demonstrate* anything.
I think we have a cultural problem here. I really cannot understand the
distinction your making between "showing" that openoffice is full of bugs
and "demonstrating" it.
When I point out that there are ~700 bugs marked fixed in 2.01, but present
in 2.0, I think I am "demonstrating" that the process by which OOo is
released has limitations. You may say I am merely showing it. The
distinction does nothing to reduce the bug count.
You might say that this is untypical for open source software as a whole --
but that would be really ridiculous. Everyone knows that OOo is one of the
most successful and relatively bug-free bits of open source software in the
world, and that the huge majority of sourceforge projects don't bloody work
at all.
But all that is really showing is that bugs do get fixed. How many of
the 700 bugs are minor?
Every piece of software that is available has bugs, there are service
packs for everything.
How many bugs does MSO or Corel Office have in them? How many are fixed
from the initial major release to the first service pack or minor release?
To say that the process in which OOo is released has limitations I feel
makes no sense. Are you also saying that because the software has bugs
that it must be a limitation, what is the solution, since all software
has bugs?. The only difference between the way OOo is released and the
other Office Suites is that you can look at the bug tracking software
and see all major and minor bugs, let's see if MS will let you look at
their issue tracking software and see how many bugs it has that are not
reported.
Some more questions to consider.
How many of the 700 bugs are Linux, Windows, Solaris? (Multi-platform
software will have different issues for each platform)
How many are Linus build related issues, (something that is unique to
Linux software, I do not build my own copy of MSO.)
700 bugs seems like a small number when you consider all that OOo does
and all the platforms that it does it on.
James Walker
