Michael O'Keefe wrote:
Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
Michael O'Keefe wrote:
Now that Gus showed me what to look for, it is installed. Perhaps
the author took it for granted that every system should have it
already?
On the other hand, it does take QUITE a bit of effort to test for
every contingency, and most hackers just say "it works on my system
- ship it!"
If it was commercial software and it behaved like that, yes you
could be mighty pissed. I wouldn't get so irate at a set of hackers
that do their best.
Uh, no. Sorry. That's not an excuse.
Linux needs to crawl out of its "works for me--tough for you"
mentality. While you can produce some useful stuff with it, you
can't move to the next level until you are willing to start applying
some discipline and some testing/QA.
I don't expect them to test on every system. I find that simply
making a Linux programmer install their program on FreeBSD is
generally enough to drive home my point.
The same standard is not applied to a Windows Shareware developer
compared to a commercial entity releasing software. If Johhny writes
it at home in his spare time, why should he put effort into making
sure it can be easily compiled on different distros or different *nix
systems ?
He's doing it in his spare time, cut him some slack
Isn't this where Torvalds was when he first wrote the Linux kernel? He
wrote the kernel so that he could compile all the other Unix programs on
the PC and run them on cheap hardware? Wasn't it others who ported the
kernel to other architectures and debugged it and made it work?
The way I see it is if someone is generous enuf to write something and
offer it up so that even a few people may benefit, then great. Wouldn't
it be nice if he makes it work for those on other hardware too? Yeah,
sure, why not, if he WANTS to, great! But if that doesn't interest him,
why should he be obligated! Especially if he leaves the source open,
let someone who wants it on different hardware do the work.
I wish I were a master programmer, and further wish that all my code
would run effortlessly on every machine out there. But if I'm not
getting paid for my time, and my bills keep coming in, then I can only
contribute to it in *some* of my spare time. I still need to have a life.
--
Ralph
--------------------
The spelling of words is subordinate. Morbidness for nice spelling and tenacity
for or against one letter or so means dandyism and impotence in literature.
--Walt Whitman
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