Re: Python or Perl for a Debian maintainance project?
Hi Steve,
this gets a bit off topic, imho, but:
On Mon, 23.02.2004 at 09:34:19 -0600, Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net> wrote:
> On 22-Feb-04, 21:11 (CST), Isaac To <kkto@csis.hku.hk> wrote:
> > Put it another way, I want useful software, not full human-machine
> > interrogation software. In general we are not creating software that is as
> > mission-critical to require those. User will retry the failed thing, and
> > choose the best recourse anyway when it fail again.
> Yeah, I'm supposed to spend another hour re-entering and processing data
> and give you another chance to throw it away. Riiiiiggggghhhht.
... in his sig:
> The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
> system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
> world. -- seen on the net
Well. The first thing to note is that this "another hour ... give you a
chance to throw it away" is still _the_ usual way to work with
computers (remember, Linux users are a minority).
Of course, having a good program is better than having a bad program,
but Isaac seems to mean very much that he likes the "publish early,
publish often" in Open Source Software rather than "We're doing a
release now and no bugfix within the next two years, so we've got to do
it right first time." (of course, they usually don't). If that
qualifies as a "sloppy wannabe", I'm not sure.
Third, for me, this "Open Source" or "Free Software" stuff is still
very much a gift and not a commodity that I have, say, a legal claim to
be given some (like enough food). I appreciate the work others spent to
provide me with a gift instead of yelling at them if the gift isn't
100% perfect. If there's less than 100% I can (in theory) still decide
to jump in and help them out.
Best,
--Toni++
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