Howard Coles Jr. wrote:
So, is this it? When your arguments for RPM are proven substandard you cower
behind programmers' thousands of hours? If that's your mentality you are no
better than MS!
I translate your attitude, "you should just take what we give you and be happy
you have it."
In the first place, I don't work for Sun and I'm not involved in the
project in any substantial way. I am a "simple end user" who is
incapable of programming my way out of a paper bag.
No, I contend that it was those same programmers who created
the original installer in the first place and spoiled us with their
excellence. The fact is that there was NO excuse for going RPM and hundreds
if not thousands of OOo customers want an installer. People running non-RPM
based distributions do not want to be treated like second class citizens,
especially debian, or its derivitives, users considering they may well be one
fourth the population of Linux users. The question now on the table is this:
Are OOo folks going to listen to their customers or, are they going to shove
what they want down the customers throat?
How exactly is offering a completely free download "shov[ing] what they
want down the customer's throat?" If you don't like it, don't use it.
And, pray tell, how exactly are you a "customer" in the first place?
You paid how much for OOo? That's right! NOTHING!!!!
Let me tell you a story:
Last spring I decided -- in conjunction with a Linux class I was taking
-- to dive in head first and use Linux exclusively. This was basically a
test of the "ready for the desktop" rhetoric I was continually hearing.
One of the Windows programs for which I needed to find a FLOSS
equivalent was Microsoft Money, which I've been using every day for
about 13 years.
The best I could find was Gnucash, which IMNSHO blows as a
Quicken/MSMoney replacement. But I used it for that semester and at the
end I inquired on their mailing list as to how I could transfer my files
back to Money. I also gave a list of reasons why I didn't like the
program and what usability changes I felt needed to be made if the
program were to gain wide acceptance, particularly among Windows refugees.
I was promptly called a whiny child and basically told to go pound
sand. I got some very nasty comments direct from the developers (God,
what a bunch of prima donnas). Keep in mind I was talking about
day-to-day usability, not an installation procedure that you had to deal
with once every few months or so.
I learned my lesson. This is open-source; basically you take what you
can get and you either like it or you fix it yourself. In any case
there's no point in whining about it.
--
Rod
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