* Fabien Ninoles said: > Yes, sometime free software sucks. But I should say simply that sometime > software, either free or not, suck. The worst problem aren't when free > software sucks. You can always debug it, or something : things will > become better by time -- at least if you really need it ;) The problem > are when non-free sucks and free not. It's a question of POV. The > question shouldn't be: > " Why do you think that a free software could be better than a non-free." > it's more: > " Why a software that I paid for is 'sucker' than a free alternative?" Well, I think it's more along the lines "What can I do to improve the software?". I assume that everyone (almost at least) on this list are developers and, further on, I think that a moral duty of every DEVELOPER using free software which is in some spot flaky is to TRY TO improve it. Moaning about how bad is the free software is plain unfair and plain unhonest. You see, the thing in open source software is that the users who happen to be developers as well should give the developers of the sofware in question the support, not the other way around. Yes, I understand it sounds quite strange, but that's the way it is. It just don't feel right in my book to step out and cry loud "THAT SOFTWARE IS CRAP! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT" - one has to make an effort to at the very least track the bug and report it to the developer of the program or, the preferred way, is to try to fix it and if one fails only then report the bug. As you, Fabien, said - the wonderful thing about free software is that you can ALWAYS do something with it unlike with the commercialware which doesn't come with source code. So, if any of us has problems with some piece of free soft, try to fix it and HELP the developers resolve the problem you stumbled upon - after all you might be the first one who suffered from this particular bug... For the record - I'm not trying to raise a flamewar here, I'm just speaking for the free software developers who give the people their work for FREE. We are all indebted with them for the sweat and effort they put in whatever they gave away to the public. > Strangely, the answer for your problem is exactly what you think is the > problem: Free Software, free code, open standards. If the W3C can provide > a free implementation of a web browser technology, a common subset of > this code could be shared among all web browsers (given the proper license I fully second you on that, Fabien! marek
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