Stan Goodman wrote: > > Nothing of the sort. Nobody is forgetting anything. The fact that it is a Beta > isn't a license to provide a half-assed program that can't be updated in-situ. > You cannot name another "readily available" program that had this "feature".
The only software I can think of where installation on top of previous versions is the norm are Windows app upgrades. All open-source software I know of supports and generally even assumes the possibility of multiple versions living side-by-side. This gives users freedom of choice and makes reversion easier because newer is not always better. Simply-unzip-over-old instructions tend to be the exception in my experience, especially in the case of large complex applications spanning hundreds of files. > It isn't that it is merely "readily available" to end users; the fact that it > is so available, with glowing descriptions, is an invitation to end-user use. > Now I understand that it is being inflicted on end users. Open-source software is readily available by definition. People download Mozilla because they want to, and any sense of coercion is self-inflicted. To me "inflicted" is having the use of Windows apps rammed down my throat by corporations, governments and other organizations as a sine qua non of doing business with them. Consider too that there are numerous different versions of Warpzilla available: the nightlies, the milestone releases, the IBM browser, emx builds, three flavors for XFree86/OS2. The concept of simple overwrite installation just doesn't fit into that picture and I don't see how it ever could. h~
