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: 2002-04-20 09:30:35 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Development process in the Ada community Date: 20 Apr 2002 09:30:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0204200830.2bd258d2@posting.google.com> 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> <3CC10367.4000904@telepath.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.244 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1019320235 4940 127.0.0.1 (20 Apr 2002 16:30:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 20 Apr 2002 16:30:35 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:22818 Date: 2002-04-20T16:30:35+00:00 List-Id: Ted Dennison wrote in message news:<3CC10367.4000904@telepath.com>... > 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 The GPL has very little to do with Open Source. I would say the above indicates that Randy does not understand the term. The GPL is merely a software license that gives users of your software more rights than most typical licenses. If you say you are philosophically opposed to the GPL, you are simply saying that you are happy only with restrictive licenses that give your users few rights. Hard to see how you could be philosophically in favor of restricting rights in this way, easy enough to see how you could be commercially in favor of such restrictions. And indeed it is clear enough that Randy's objections to open source should be taken with a grain of salt, considering that, like Microsoft, he is in the proprietary software business and finding himself in competition with GPL'ed software :-) > 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. And it is *less* painful not to give them anything in the first place??? Sort of like meeting a beggar on the street and deciding to give nothing, because otherwise you will feel a moral obligation to provide food, clothing, and housing :-) > I think no matter how you go, at some point you do have to draw a line. > ACT seems to do it by prioritizing bug fixes in favor of paying customers It is not a matter of prioritizing, ALL our work is aimed at providing services to our customers. You need to get used, as you would with any other company, of assuming that everything we do is aimed at satisfying our existing customers and getting more customers. > by being a bit anal about submitted bug reports being in the proper form > from unsupported users That's because we find it is only worth while for us to pay attention to well submitted reports. We pay attention to such reports not to help those who submit them, to whom we have no obligations at all, but because if the reports are clear and cleanly submitted, then it may be helpful to our customers to fix problems found in this way. Most useful reports from ACT come from a small group of people to whom we have give "external tester" status (those of you reading this know you are). These are people who have in the past submitted helpful reports in a constructive manner, and we give them a special pseudo-customer number and track their submissions. Again, we do this not because of any obligation to this group of people, but because they help us with our primary goal of providing high quality products for our customers. The majority of reports on the public version from outside this group have proved of relatively small value (there are exceptions, but few and far between). Mostly they are people asking questions that could for instance be answered by reading the manual. For our customers, we are more than happy to answer all questions, that's part of what they are paying for, but we have no time for non-customers unless they are helping us! > 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. How odd .. Ted Dennison is indeed one of the people who over the years has chafed at not being able to get free support, but I don't feel the least bit "ruthless" in not providing Ted any kind of support. We are like any other company, we have to provide services for our customers, we are not some kind of charitable organization that has been set up to keep non-customers like Ted happy :-) > 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... We have never said this to customers (Ted wouldn't know, he has never been a customer). Now of course this does not mean Boeing is going to take the time, effort (and incur the possible liability) of distributing software to Ted. The GPL is about giving Boeing all the freedom that Boeing needs to make full use of the software. That is relatively unlikely to include sending copies to Ted :-) By the way, I find it highly amusing for Ted to be pontificating on the GPL like this. It is in fact perfectly within the spirit of the GPL to ask (not require) people not to distribute certain software at certain times. For example, the GNU project itself frowns on people taking untested snapshots and making them into widely distributed products. It's just not helpful to the GNU project to have this kind of half baked software wandering around. Richard Stallman certainly would not agree with Ted's assessment of the "spirit of the GPL" here. The spirit of the GPL is about allowing effective sharing of software. Sometimes, effective sharing involves NOT prematurely widely distributing things, and everyone understands this. > 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. :-) Yes I can sympathize (with your father-in-law -- most odd indeeed) :-)