Hi :) I agree with that but there is some minor additional complexity that doesn't really affect the main points of the post but might be interesting.
Not all "our" devs are volunteers. I think most are, possibly "almost all" but some are employees of the various companies seen listed on "our" supporters page http://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/ The employees probably don't have much say in what they work on. I would guess that they are told what to do or, if they are lucky, get pointed at a particular area. There is a list of people that are credited with having worked on code but the stats are a bit rough and it's only up to about mid-June http://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/credits/ I have a feeling the employees might have been missed off that list although my feeling is that they should be included too. There is at least one so i could be wrong. Probably some people have been missed off but might get included next time. The code was (maybe still is in places) messy because the project is over a decade old. Things generally need cleaning occasionally and there was a plan being developed under Sun to do a massive clean-up. The move to TDF meant that could finally be started on. I heard that the code is now 20-30% lighter! Regards from Tom :) ________________________________ From: webmaster for Kracked Press Productions <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, 26 August, 2011 11:42:29 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Suggestions to PTB Question: Which version of LibreOffice are you using? 3.3.3, 3.3.4, 3.4.1, 3.4.2? Many issues/bugs have been fixed in the 3.4.x line that has not yet been fixed in the 3.3.x line. 3.4.x reads MS formats better, is one of the fixes in that line. I kissed MSO completely on Feb. 2010 when I choose Ubuntu as my OS on my new desktop. Then when LibreOffice came out I kissed OpenOffice.org goodbye. I had been using MSO since Office 95 or 97, with the last one Office 2003. As for releasing software with "bugs", this is normal, even with MS products. Many bugs are found in real world testing that happens on some systems, but not others. When these bugs are reported, they are placed on some type of "bug needing to be fixed list". Then it is up to the individuals who do the programming/developing [all volunteers] to choose which bug they have the skills to fix. I was a mainframe programmer. I was really good. I am not skilled in the programming needed for developing/fixing code for LibreOffice. We all hope that the next release has the bug fixed that causes problems for some groups of users. Each release does its best to have as many issues fixed as it can with the fixed release schedule. With a fixed release schedule, it give the developers/helpers/bug-fixers a time line to do the work. Some bugs takes a long time to find the code that is the problem. I was once told that the code base for LibreOffice [and OpenOffice.org] is 100's of thousands of lines of code. Some are no longer used, while some are in need of "cleaning up". The LibreOffice developers took OpenOffice.org's open source code base and dedicated themselves to cleaning up all the messy and bad coding that was in the OOo code base. They did a lot of that and made improvements and more functions/abilities in their 3.3.0 release and came out with it before Oracle's people came out with OOo's 3.3.0 package. Plus, the tech-media stated that LibreOffice was a better product from the volunteers for The Documents Foundation/ LibreOffice than was put out by the paid employees [and some volunteers] at Oracle. To be honest, I was told that many of the bugs that are annoying LibreOffice users can be traced back to the original messed up core coding and the fixes placed on top of that coding to make it work, instead of fixing that core code that is not working correctly. That is some of the hardest work for our volunteeers, to trace and fix the core coding that should have been fixed long time ago when it was developed during the time Sun Microsystems "owned" the OpenOffice brand. Our developers are all volunteers and they are doing the best that they can. If Sun, and then Oracle, paid employees working 8 hours a day 5 days a week was working on developing/fixing/improving the OpenOffice.org product and did not do as good of a job putting out the 3.3.0 version of OOo as was put out with the all volunteer package of LibreOffice, we have to give our people a hand for all that they did to make LO better than OOo. Our volunteers are doing the best job as possible for volunteers and their limited amount of time after they come home from their paid jobs. They deserve out thanks for their dedication to making LibreOffice the best they can make it with the limits to their time to do the work. Sorry for the band standing, but our volunteers are doing everything they are able to do to make LibreOffice the best free MSO alternative office package. On 08/26/2011 02:16 AM, Alexander Thurgood wrote: > Le 25/08/11 19:37, Twayne a écrit : > > Hi Twayne, > >> I would love to tell MS to kiss my shiny metal butt, but I can't as long >> as some of these serious bugs continue to be ignored. One man can push one >> car; as you're doing now, but not three or four at the same time. All this >> is part of watching out for the future of LO and being able to say its users >> are solidly behind it. Anythng that doesn't work shouldn't have been >> released until it does work. > I fear you might have misunderstood how this project functions. Most of > the bugs get fixed as and when someone decides that their "itch to > scratch" is really starting to annoy them. The developers working as > employees of some of the software companies involved in the LibreOffice > project do not have set agendas with regard to bug fixing as such that I > know of - no doubt they have their own internal work pressures and > priorities to deal with before sorting out bug X or bug Y. Most of the > volunteer developers participate in the project because they like > developing, i.e. for fun. There's no fun involved in being told which > bug to fix and why that particular bug should trump all others, in that > case, they might as well go and develop something else. The fact of the > matter is that there are still too few developers to be able to maintain > the massive beast of code which LibreOffice represents. Add to that the > fact that an even smaller number really know anything about the code > base and how it works as a whole (i.e. where poking one thing causes the > butterfly to explode on your screen 50,000 miles away). > > If you can live with the way the project functions, then you can live > with the bugs. If not, then from a pragmatic point of view you can > either do it yourself, pay someone to do it for you, or else come back > to the project in a few months/years time to see if things have moved on > in the direction you want. > > Alex > > -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
