Bob Ham wrote: > On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 10:37 +0200, Fons Adriaensen wrote: > > >> Someone sets up a firm that provides a free service: >> they enhance your life by removing things from your >> home and disposing of them. >> >> One day I return home and find some things have been >> removed. >> >> I go the manager of the free service and tell him: >> >> - Listen, I don't want you to enter my home and >> remove things uninvited. >> >> - But then I can't do my job ! >> >> - So you are thieves ? >> >> - No, no, no, we just provide a free service >> that enhances your life. >> > > > I have to say, I think this is really out of line, Fons. Implying free > software developers are theives because they've changed something and > you don't like it is quite extraordinary. > > I think a better analogy would be like so: > > > Someone sets up a firm that provides and maintains free furniture, > appliances, plumbing and electricity for anybody's home. > > One day, you come home and find half of your radiators don't work > because someone has started upgrading the plumbing and hasn't finished > yet. > > You go to the manager of the free service and tell him: > > - Listen, I don't want you to stop the radiators in my house from > working. > > - That's fine, you're entirely free to install your own plumbing, or fix > the plumbing we've installed for you. > > - I don't want to, you should do it for me and do it right dammit!
Both metaphors are error coloured. If a community will do something together as an free alternative, than nobody can command to get something that fit to his needs so much tuned, as if he has paid for something. But it's stupid for a free alternative, if working stuff can become absolutely incompatible to older versions or cause major troubles for many used functions. I'm speaking in general, not especially for the different threads about the rc files and dbus. If people call attention to things that can cause trouble in the future or that cause trouble right now, than it's not clever to answer, that he should do it by himself, pay for something etc.. Ideas, different opinions or getting aware of something other people haven't noticed and refer to it, isn't an attack against the people that are working for free, especially not if it comes from people who do their self work without being paid. I'm using Linux since years (not rt-audio ;)) and the architecture of Linux has one big disadvantage. You might have a Linux that is fine, the times are changing and in addition you need an absolutely new application, but you don't need to update any of the applications you're using since years. You can't install the new application, because dependencies needs to be updated and that causes that also your perfect working applications needs to be updated. You do an update. The new applications is fine. The old, updated applications ... ... are fine ... but not all, some are broken ... ... others are fine for new work, but you can't load old projects any more ... ... other applications can't be installed any more ... etc. ... Sometimes a coder or a packer (packages builder?!) don't work as intensive with 'hi' application as the community does, so he can fail to see some issues. Resume: If something was fine, it's not an advantage if it gets broken. If something needs to be broken, because of the development, it shouldn't be released. We won't practise on stage, we practise in the rehearsal room. Sorry, I need to write this, Ralf _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
