Re: Do We Need a New Evangelist?
"Phillip R. Jaenke" <prj@nls.net> writes:
> A good leader isn't someone who translates; a good leader is someone who
> works, and works hard. GPL code is near-thankless. People bitch, moan,
> complain, and whine about bugs. And you don't get paid for your work most
> of the time. You do it because you want to.
I disagree. Coding GPL is probably the best thing you can do. And
it's no near-thankless. Look at the sort of hero Linus has become
because of Linux.
Look at how any project works. Many encourage the "Bazaar" style of
development. Bug reports that we ("we" meaning developers, not Debian
ones in this particular case) get are not adversarial or whining.
They come from people that have noticed a problem and want to help
make the software better by reporting it. Sometimes, a patch is
included. Other times, logfile snippets, core dumps, or some gdb
tracing is included. You see, people realize that whining isn't going
to accomplish anything. But cooperation and help will. This is the
beauty of GPL.
With proprietary software, we often have no choice but to whine.
Unresponsive software corporations may not care about the bugs, or
even acknowledge their existance. With Free Software, not only can we
participate in the development ourselves, but we can also assist by
reporting bugs. Most projects are quite concerned with squashing
bugs.
This element of peer review is a key advantageof the Free Software
development paradigm that many people studying Free Software have
identified. It's healthy and encouraged -- not a pest.
> General -+
> +-+ The Extremists!
> +-> GPL extremists
Interesting how you, by extension, label FSF as extreme. They funded
Debian's initial development, and are responsible for many tools we
need for our existance. This assertion is a bit hard to swallow.
-- John
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