On 08/29/2012 05:14 PM, Chris Cannam wrote: > I'm not sure there is such a simple dichotomy, though. It has so much > to do with temperament and perspective. Indeed. Rosegarden is a perfect example. If I could go spend, say, $500 once for something that did everything Rosegarden wants to do, and behaved in a pretty similar way all around, then I probably would have parted with that cash years ago. The problem is you can spend a lot more than $500 for two or three different applications that don't even communicate with each other, don't share data amongst themselves, etc. Not only do you not get the Rosegarden that works that you pay for, you don't pay for it once. Oh no no.
I was still using a version of Cakewalk that only understood 8.3 filenames all the way to 2001. I paid for it once in 1993 or something, and I was damn well going to keep using it forever. That's the great thing about FOSS. Free updates for life. You don't pay once, you don't pay ever, and the updates just keep flowing. The crappy thing about FOSS is that that old version from 10 years ago that worked perfectly will no longer compile on a modern system. Just look at all the hell we went through keeping Rosegarden alive through the Qt 4 nightmare. This means that whether you do it today or next month or a couple of years from now, sooner or later you're going to have to upgrade your entire system from top to bottom. When you do, you may break half the world. Or at least break the most important application you use every day. When that happens, there's just no good answer. Can I pay money for a KMail that actually works, and doesn't break the continuity of 11 years of the same ~/Mail folder? Apparently not. Whether I pay money or not, I'm still just shit out of luck on that front. Thanks, KMail developers, for completely destroying an application I've been using at least a dozen times a day for 11 years. Even though I'm a developer and I well understand how hard this whole game is, I'm more than half tempted to go create a KDE bugs account for the sole purpose of extending them a big fuck you. It wouldn't be productive at all, or fair, but it might be cathartic. Bitter? Not me. No, never. We'll see how Thunderbird fares. I have deep concerns that this message is going to come out in HTML. If so, I apologize. I'll figure it out in due course. It looks like this is my KMail replacement, and it's a huge improvement so far, because I can actually click on a message and read it any time I want. Plus, it's not webmail. I detest webmail. /rant -- D. Michael McIntyre ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
