On Mar 20, 2007, at 1:00 PM, Jeff Fisher wrote:
> Tell me what I got wrong.
OK, here goes:
> Oh come on Ed, I've been reading the 'Hate everything Microsoft'
> stuff from
> you for years. For you, it's more like open source vs. Microsoft.
Gee, I was always accused of being a Mac bigot because I preferred
them over Windows machines. Now you have concocted some other
religious cause as my motivation.
I'll say it as clearly as I can: use the best tool for the job at
hand. If you have the choice between two or more tools that both can
do the job, it is in your interest to go with the open source tool.
> One of the biggest reasons you started Dabo is because you wanted
> to get
> away from a Microsoft product and into 'open source'.
No, it was because as a consultant, I saw the number of calls I got
for Fox work dropping precipitously, and I needed to figure out my
next move if I wanted to stay busy. I looked at several alternatives,
including a few Java options, before deciding that I wanted to
program in Python. That decision was based on two things: Python is
an absolutely wonderful language to code it, and no company could
ever buy it out and bury it.
If I was going to invest my time and effort into mastering a new
tool, I did not want to end up in the same situation I now find
myself in: being very good at developing with an amazing product,
only to have some marketing department somewhere decide that they
could make more money by marginalizing this amazing product and
moving everyone to a less capable tool that would generate more money
for the company. I also didn't want to bet my future on the dominance
of any single platform; being platform-agnostic was a requirement.
There wasn't any tool out there that even came close to these
demands, so along with another Fox guy who had come to pretty much
the same conclusion I set out to create it myself.
If all I had wanted to do was get away from a Microsoft product and
into open source (why do you quote that term?) there are no shortage
of products out there. I'm spoiled by my years with FoxPro, though,
and all of those other alternatives just seemed lame compared with
the Fox.
> Let's take a look at the rest of your application choices here:
I just gave a few; I didn't plan on spending all day setting you
straight.
> SourceSafe is the industry leader for such a product.
As long as you narrowly define the industry. Outside of the
Microsoft sphere, it is not used at all.
> CVS doesn't even come
> close. It is difficult to work with, the GUI front ends all suffer
> from a
> total lack of advancement when compared to 'paid' products.
You do realize that these are your own self-serving conclusions;
have you ever used TortoiseCVS? Can't get much simpler and easier
than that. There are several excellent GUI front ends for CVS,
although you are correct that they have not gotten the attention they
need lately, since nearly every CVS user has moved onto Subversion
and other even better SCC systems.
> MapPoint vs. Google Earth? Google Earth is a great way of getting
> maps,
> viewing different areas and so on but with MapPoint, I can load in
> my own
> data from a wide variety of sources and make maps that are useful
> for my
> needs. Can't do that with Google Earth.
That's great for you; if I had that need I would probably still be
using MapPoint, too. But I needed it for maps, directions, and the like.
> In fact, MapPoint is just
> Microsoft's old direction software [can't remember the name] but
> with the
> ability of real statistical analysis, census information,...
Again, if that were my needs... but it isn't.
> If there was an open source alternative, you would choose it.
> Doesn't matter
> if the open source alternative lacked the features of what it was
> attempting
> to replace or the stability.
Now that's a total crock. Re-read what you wrote above and tell me
that it's possible to read that and not conclude that the person you
wrote it about is an incompetent religious nut.
> There are actually very few open source products that even come
> close to
> what is out there. For example, over the weekend, I loaded up
> ubuntu on a
> spare PC. I typically use this PC to as a print server, messing
> around box,
> and to play music while I work. On the windows side, I use
> applications like
> MediaMonkey, JetAudio, and Winamp to play music. Anything like that
> out
> there for Linux? Not even close and I have tried quite a few
> alternatives
> now. They won't play my MP3's, did find something to play my WMA's
> but no
> way of creating a playlist.
Can't help you here, since I don't use Linux as my every day
machine; I just use it as my server and as a development machine. I
use my Mac for all my multimedia needs.
BTW, MP3s are no problem to play. Most of the Microsoft-developed
formats, though, are crippled by licensing restrictions. IOW, it
isn't a matter of technology, but of legal departments, and the
Microsoft world definitely has the advantage there.
> Most of the interfaces look like they were
> developed way back in '95 and even then, most won't work at all.
I don't know why you continue to rant about media players; I never
mentioned them. But you seem to continue to imply that I somehow made
this argument, since you are countering so vehemently.
> Some of
> them required that I go back to a command line to install - haven't
> seen
> that in the rest of the world for decades.
That's funny - I remember the exact opposite argument being used
against those toy 'Mac' machines by a bunch of DOS users.
And if you had to install anything from a command line in Ubuntu -
well, then you just didn't bother to learn how to do it the easy way.
> And to top it off, the damn thing
> just locked up on me again - had to reboot. But even with that
> said, you
> would pick it over Microsoft.
I have had my Linux boxes lock up once: when a USB drive died in the
middle of a write, and the CPU went to 100% as it kept trying to
finish writing. The other processes kept going (dual CPU), but it was
so slow trying to find the command to kill that I just rebooted the
thing. I didn't have to worry, since with an ext3 journalling file
system I didn't have to worry about corrupted files.
The point is that I could write a hundred such stories about
Windows, and I don't think you'd consider them relevant at all. So it
seems disingenuous of you to write such unsubstantiated crap and try
to ascribe it to me and my motives.
> Open source is for the most part, so behind the rest of the world.
> There are
> only a few exception to the many failed projects or should be dropped
> projects.
Not going to bite that flame bait. Instead, I'm going to click
'Send', which will forward this email over a BSD sendmail
implementation on my Mac to the Postfix SMTP server on my Ubuntu
machine over TCP/IP, where the /etc/aliases file will redirect the
message to Mailman, which is the list server for ProFox, and which is
written in 100% Python. Before it reaches the list server, though, it
will be filtered through ClamAV for viruses, and SpamBayes (also 100%
Python) for spam content. Once it reaches Mailman it will be
forwarded to Postfix with a list of email addresses that are
subscribed to the list, and also to a Python script that filters out
[OT] messages, and passes the non-OT mail on to the ProFoxTech list.
The message will be passed to a Python archiving script that will use
the MySQLdb module to directly insert the message to the MySQL
database that is used for the archives. You can view those archives
at any time by using a browser that understands HTML and JavaScript
by typing in the URL for the archive. That browser will then use the
public DNS system to resolve the URL into an IP address, where it
will pass a request to my Apache server. Apache will recognize the
address as one that is handled by the Zope app server, and will pass
it along to Zope (also 100% Python). The Zope server will take the
request, run a query against the MySQL database, take the results and
format them nicely, and then return it back through Apache to your
browser.
-- Ed Leafe
-- http://leafe.com
-- http://dabodev.com
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