2009/12/3 Carlos E. R.
This may sound hostile but it is not: openSUSE is free software just like SaX2. If people feel SaX2 is still of great value why can't they step up and take it over?
Maybe we don't have the skills to do it.
This was the whole purpose of my original email. As a free software developer who has devoted a lot of his spare time on developing free software I always found the demanding attitude of some users very inappropriate. This is no different regarding the demands made on Novell.
We are users. We use. We don't "dev". We ask for what we want/need. We can not do it ourselves. We can help in some other ways, but we cant develop or maintain.
In other words, we see you as our "suppliers".
GNU & FOSS server applications got a foothold and community who then
desired an OS unencumbered by commercial license. This software ran
on proprietary hardware, mostly running the vendor UNIX. But it made
sense for the community to share code, so the pool of contributors
increased.
There was always an exchange of skills going on. Some openSUSE user
may be an expert in a particular application area, or simply test
chipset & hard disk controllers on a new release. This may benefit X
developers later, when they become users of the application software,
or use mainboards with derivatives of the tested parts.
The majority may not be able to hack C, or write good scripts, or have
the skill set to build applications and package them.
But what everyone can do, is use the distro and write bug reports.
Then when a program is dropped, look at the alternatives and make sure
the use cases are covered reasonably.
Some of those users, with time become experts, or pick up skills
needed to contribute better, the majority will always be passive
consumers for any given source base.
2009/12/3 Egbert Eich
On Wednesday, 2009-12-02 at 12:20 +0100, Egbert Eich wrote:
I personally doubt that it would have made a huge difference had we communicated things early on in the 11.2 release cycle. I've seen bug reports for X coming in. Many of the rather obvious and quite visible bugs have not been reported until the 2 or 3 weeks prior to the release.
So how to improve that situation? I think the online upgrade, helps lower the bar. To interest ppl in testing the new features, communication is important. Perhaps having feedback on what hardware has been tested, would encourage folk to see they can make a useful contribution, by donating a few spare hours. When testing the general release, frankly I'm looking more at how the installer & new kernel perform, and for any signs of problems that might not be easily solved by updates post GM. It actually can be quite time consuming submitting bug reports, and then trying to respond to them promptly. This it is always going to be a temptation, to ignore "rather obvious and quite visible bugs", precisely because they are going to be reported by others who tend to be highly sensitive to cosmetic issues. Not all of the developers & support who respond to bugzilla reports, appear pleased & accepting of bug reports, nor is it always clear that something is happening to solve the issue. So anything that requires description, and cannot be simply shown via logs, is less attractive to report by a rationalist. Rob -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org