Oh, gee, I wish I knew what I started last night... :-( Once again, I am *not* blaming or accusing any of the Mozilla developers of absolutely anything! Calm down, please! On Wed, Aug 16, 2000 at 08:55:17PM +0000, Brevsville Administrator wrote:
People like myself who spend our time developing free software (I am not involved in Mozilla by the way) , get little thanx and no money for doing so. We could better spend our time developing commercial software and get paid good money for doing so. But no we write free software so people get good quality software for FREE and to prevent the commercial monoliths from shafting us all.
Chris, I did (and will continue to, when I feel adventurous) gently - it doesn't take *any* abuse at all - use Mozilla and send out my TalkBack reports. The problem is, *I* can deal with an application that I can crash in 5 seconds flat - I just don't want anybody else to think that this is what Linux is all about. The first Linux computer I've got was a 486DX2 with 4Mb of RAM and kernel 0.98pl34. I would compile the kernel of the hour, and when the poor thing would swap itself to death and crash every now and then, I'd understand it. What seems to be missing from Mozilla, is an old-fashioned distinction between the things you know you can do well and the things you know you can't do well. Just because Mozilla developers write "FREE" (as in beer) software, doesn't mean that it's usable or *GOOD* (philosophically). How can this great Mozilla project bring us salvation from "commercial monoliths" if nobody except hard-core lunatics (myself included) can stomach it for more than 5 minutes? Don't take this as an offense, but the philosophy and the promise of the free software (as I understand it) has been not to betray the users by promising too much. I've seen well-intentioned IT projects fail, and I blame muself for one of them. It started great on paper: Oracle-backed + distributed computing. And then it all turned to shit. Granted, I am not familiar with the inner workings of the Mozilla project, but, based on it's timeline, I've got a strong suspicion that all of the thousands of man-hours have been wasted because of a misguided leadership.
If you don't like the software it's ok .. send a consideratly worded email reporting as best you can what the bug is and and it will be fixed. or just go buy one you do like.
Have you ever noticed that TalkBack wouldn't tell you anything about the crash? And that when you've got 2 windows open at the same time, you can't even tell which one caused the crash? "Netscape Quality Feedback Agent" gives you absolutely no way to view the information you're sending back. Do you really insist that I feel attached to such "wham-bam, thank you ma'am" application? -- ET. -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq