Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

[Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org>]

Chad R. Meiners wrote:
> 
> I agree that without competition certain companies, corporations, and
> individuals have produced poor software.  One of the reasons I like GNU
> software is that it provides a constant pressure on everybody to produce.  I
> don't think that John Doe is getting 'milked'.  New revisions of OS are like
> new revisions of text books.  John Doe buys a version of the text book and
> gets a list of errata for corrections.  Same with OS's.  Renting OS's,
> however, would be annoying.

You bought a computer with NT. Then NT gets dumped by M$ (no more
security fixes as the OS cannot be fixed there are too big problems with
it (this is was M$ are saying)) so you must buy 2000 or XP. That is $250
then you must buy Office for 2000 or XP because the old is not working
correctly probably around $500 for the package. So in order to use your
computer for anything useful you need at least to fork out $750 and then
you still get your data saved in a closed source file format. $750 is
actually more money than you spent on the hardware (evenif you had
bought a completely new machine). Then there are the tons of annoyances,
bugs, user unfriendly things and you sit there tearing your hair out.

The only problem is that either John Doe has a computer at his office so
he doesn't pay the $750 or he pirated the software. He then complains,
but he doesn't blame M$ the same way he would if he had paid this sum
out of his own pocket. And for some strange reasons people accept that
software should be buggy. I once got an error message in Windows 3.11
which I think came from an application, but I couldn't really tell. It
read: "Error: No Error" which says it all.

I mean would you not go and complain if your scooter (that you payed
$750 for) suddenly died every X miles and you had to start it up again.
Or suddenly the breaks stopped working and you had to manage to stop and
start it again?

> Yes, I understand, but such is life.  Not even GNU software is immune to
> such things :(

No life isn't such. It is the low quality of the industry and the lack
of complains. Sure there are some bugs in GNU software too, but I have
not have whole days go by just because I couldn't get a program to work
or that suddenly a program decided not to save my document so I had to
print it and write it all over again.

-- 
�I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet.
 So who am I to judge.�
                 - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radioplay)