From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,ac39a12d5faf5b14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-04-19 22:56:24 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!cox.net!news2.east.cox.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3CC10367.4000904@telepath.com> From: Ted Dennison User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.7) Gecko/20011221 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Development process in the Ada community References: <3CB94312.5040802@snafu.de> <4519e058.0204150645.62003096@posting.google.com> <3CBCEB15.E104D1F5@adaworks.com> <4519e058.0204170958.22f797c4@posting.google.com> <4519e058.0204180739.4cbea611@posting.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 05:56:25 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.12.51.201 X-Complaints-To: abuse@cox.net X-Trace: news2.east.cox.net 1019282185 68.12.51.201 (Sat, 20 Apr 2002 01:56:25 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 01:56:25 EDT Organization: Cox Communications Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:22807 Date: 2002-04-20T05:56:25+00:00 List-Id: Randy Brukardt wrote: > Well, I have a philosophical objection to the GPL (or, more accurately, > Open Source). I believe programmers have an ethical obligation to stand > behind their programming. There are exceptions, of course (if the I really didn't understand what you were getting at here, till I got down to this next part: > has been an important part of RR's business for years. The main problem > (personally) is that I have a hard time delaying the support for > unsupported customers. I've actually tried to figure out how to delay > seeing messages on the Claw mailing list for a couple of days, simply to Ahhhh. I think I understand. As someone who has multiple publicly available projects out there, I certianly know the feeling of moral obligation when someone asks for help with a problem in *your* code. With me, occasionally someone will just be so lost that it would take forever to help them out, and I have other commitments (a job, a house and yard, a wife and 2 kids) that preclude me from spending the time to give them the help they need. Its always painful when I have to tell someone I can't help them any further. I think no matter how you go, at some point you do have to draw a line. ACT seems to do it by prioritzing bug fixes in favor of paying customers by being a bit anal about submitted bug reports being in the proper form from unsupported users, and by giving supported customers first dibbs on newly-developed code and bug fixes. It apparently works for them, but I have at times thought I'd have trouble being as rutheless about it as they seem to be. And let's not even get into the fact that asking customers not to redistribute the fixes you give them to non-customers is quite against the spirit of the GPL... > facilitate that. (This is the same reason I rarely buy a newspaper -- > because I feel compelled to read it all -- a time investment I can't > make.) Funny. I have that exact same problem with newspapers too. I tried explaining this to my father-in-law (a retired English teacher and regular newspaper reader) and he looked at me like I had 3 heads. :-)