On 06/04/2011 09:58 AM, [email protected] wrote: > Hi DJ, > > First off. > At (B)LFS, to which I've "belonged" for many years now, > I met only nice people and whether volunteer or not, many high > quality professionals. You, in particular, are at the top of my list. > Period.
Well thank you very much! > What has gotten to me is the amateurism, mis-coordination and the > ensuing constant and disgusting cover-up that has reached the highest > levels of "open source" production (witness this incident, > the "settle" in udev-168, Firefox-4.0 and -3.6.14, etc.). Yes, these are all good examples...but see below. > It's possible that, what with the recent and projected technological > directions the world has taken, more people have started to see Linux > as really irrelevant now and jumped ship (in the water or to other > vistas and endeavors du jour). I actually see it exactly the opposite. > It's maybe a seemingly insignificant development - ironically, some > poetic justice after years of constantly trashing the enemy - > to find the Home button at the right on the new Firefox. > Is that a white flag or what? IDK, I just don't see it as a white flag. It really depends on how the majority of users exercise the software. I seriously doubt that the the change in question was simply committed without consideration of user habits. I think it is safe to say that you can't please everyone, so you simply have to go with the preferences of the majority. Keep in mind that in recent years, there has been a large influx of of former Windows users jumping ship to easy distros like Ubuntu. Opposite vantage point. I know for a fact that I am partially responsible for this trend. Mom, Dad, Kids, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, quite a few of my friends, and if my grand parents were still around, they'd be on it too. This alone could account for the move of the home button. To be honest, I hadn't even noticed (I rarely use the home button). Consistency across platforms is also a concern of the Mozilla projects, I mean they have 6 (more?) major environments to support, and no matter which OS I happen to be using at the time, I can expect a relatively consistent user experience, save for the location of the close, maximize/restore, minimize, and (if supported) iconify buttons. That, at least to me, is pretty impressive given the major differences in those environments. > If there is an AT, and there is one, it is clearly pointed at the > _indifference_ shown by (B)LFS denizens at recent "open source" > issues I alluded to (or had in mind). > To see it more clearly, simply imagine one of Window$ iterations just > dropping the floppy "enumeration" at one point. > All Seattle area would've been gutted by fire in an instant. I disagree. In fact, it is in process already in the Windows operating system. For instance, the F6 prompt can now be answered with a USB key. I suspect the indifference can be answered by this very example of the floppy drive. The mass majority of users simply have no use for a floppy now days. I think I might still have a couple of MFM HDDs and a controller out in my shed, think those are still supported? I haven't the slightest clue how to marry them anymore. In fact, I don't even have a single PC that they could be used in (ISA). While I agree that there has been a problem with release quality as of late, given the examples above, I don't really consider it a severe problem in the grand scheme of things (see below for why). > But then again, as I said, all may be excused and ascribed to the new > attractions in town (and there are many and _valid_) luring people away > from demanding the best (or at least a reasonable level of excellence) in > Linux. I suppose we just have a different vantage point. I see it as normal growing pains. As you mentioned above, many valid changes are coming down the pipe to "modernize" the OSes--unfortunately for maintainers, it seems that the flood gates have been opened. For a number of reasons, these oversights are likely to occur with more frequency for a short time, it is just relative to the number of changes occurring. On a positive note, just keep in mind that oversights like these are embarrassing to the developers, and you can bet that QC changes will occur upstream to keep these same mistakes from happening again, which I consider a positive change. IDK, I guess I just tend to see the positives over the negatives in most cases, though, like most, I am definitely more vocal about the negatives. At any rate, things will settle down soon enough, but hopefully not *too* soon. :-) -- DJ Lucas -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
