At 10:29 PM 11/15/2005 -0800, Brolin Empey wrote:
Michael Devore wrote:
And another warning: NASM done got it some bugs. Even with the
relatively modest source of HIMEM, I hit a couple.
Have you told the NASM maintainers about these issues? I think they would
probably be interested in working with you in order to fix the bugs. NASM
is the "Netwide" assembler after all. It is developed by many
individuals--many of them volunteers--working together over the internet,
not by a large company like Microsoft or Borland. These companies can
afford to hire people for quality assurance and testing. After all, their
customers expect the product they purchase to work correctly. Customers
can report bugs, which can be fixed by the developer's employees. NASM,
on the other hand, is a volunteer project. The users must contribute to
the product if they are unsatisfied with it.
I don't want this to sound like a rant. I just found your message to
sound like one from someone who is willing to complain about something but
unwilling to do something to solve the problem. Hopefully this is not the
case.
As I indicated in another message, perhaps in freedos-devel, at least one
of the issues had already been posted to a NASM-related forum. Plus, there
were questions raised there about whether the developers are processing
reports and making fixes. That could be simply be the result of users not
getting highest priority attention to their personal bug-fix favorites, or
perhaps there is more to it. I did spend a bit of time before I left,
prior to posting the latest HIMEM/EMM386 release, digging around the [N]ASM
newsgroups/forums/lists to see what was going on with the bugs and whether
NASM is actively maintained. I still don't have a firm answer.
I know the basics of how open source development works. Or how it
frequently doesn't work. I am not lacking in suggestions on how to
apportion my time for open source issues and I have invested many days
dedicated to open source support -- not just for FreeDOS. Frankly, I've
paid the dues.
Are you a regular user and supporter of NASM? I am not, nor do I plan to
be for the foreseeable future. If you are a NASM user and supporter, you
are certainly welcome to visit the appropriate venue and post the issues if
they are not repeats. Feel free to query me on further
details. Otherwise, I am not overly interested in public opinion pieces on
my deficits for not spending another hour or five I did not have making
sure NASM developers, who may or may not interested, receive another
handful of possibly duplicate bug reports for one of their (apparently)
less-popular target platforms.
Lastly, I offer this nugget of pure opinion. We can, with clear
conscience, gripe about things which irritate us as long as we don't overdo
the bitching and moaning bit. Complaining about things which do not work
as expected is a fundamental human experience. Humans cannot and should
not be expected to fix everything we complain about, even could we
sacrifice all our free time to do it. If open source is really a viable
replacement for "closed" source, then it should be able to abide a few
random gripes about how it works, just the same as proprietary software
does. Perhaps you have seen a few complaints about Microsoft software?
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