Posting without comment
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(Except to say this is the type of criticism you generally don't see in the open source community, and it's kind of refreshing.)
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It's a major problem in the tech industry at large but I'll mention it anyways because it's serious: Linux/open source developers are often not interested in fixing bugs if they cannot easily reproduce them
QFFT. Android bugs in Discourse, anyone?
There's a lot of hostility in the open source community.
Again, QFT.
No standard way of software deployment (pushing software via SSH is indeed an option, but it's in no way standard, easy to use or obvious - you can use a sledgehammer to crack nuts the same way).
We're running into this now. My new shiny deployment script uses wget to pull down the latest built assets from the build server, and thank god they're all interpreted files so I don't have to fuck around with make.
It's worth noting that the most vocal participants of the Open Source community are extremely bitchy and overly idealistic people peremptorily requiring everything to be open source and free or it has no right to exist at all in Linux. With an attitude like this, it's no surprise that a lot of companies completely disregard and shun the Linux desktop.
I had a chat just the other day with a guy who turned out to be a huge GPL fan. I pointed out, I like the idea of free software, but holding a gun to people's head and saying "If you want my library you have to make yours free" is just hostile and makes people decide not to use your libarary. Like corporations like ours.
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"If you want my library you have to make yours free" is just hostile and makes people decide not to use your libarary.
That's what LGPL is for, but yeah, there are people who think that's treason against the free software crusade.
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>It's a major problem in the tech industry at large but I'll mention it anyways because it's serious: Linux/open source developers are often not interested in fixing bugs if they cannot easily reproduce them
QFFT.
Agreed.
if it's a bug it's a bug. dismissing it as WOMM or OMTD are COMPLETELY unacceptable
Again, QFT.
:-( too true. and too sad.. I pointed out, I like the idea of free software, but holding a gun to people's head and saying "If you want my library you have to make yours free" is just hostile and makes people decide not to use your libarary.
QFFTthat's why i like licenses such as CC-BY, or MIT, or WTFPL
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WTFPL
WTFPL doesn't claim to free you from any liability so I believe (IANAL) that you could be held liable for damages resulting from your WTFPL software.
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if it's a bug it's a bug. dismissing it as WOMM or OMTD are COMPLETELY unacceptable
It depends on what "easy to reproduce" means. Lots of steps? or...Only happens sometimes, unpredictably? Granted, the severity of the bug will change my eagerness to work on it, whether we're talking open source or my paid day job.
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It depends on what "easy to reproduce" means.
there's a difference between acknowledging a bug and not fixing it because you cannot easily reproduce the bug (or because there's something more interesting to work on (i am realistic here)) and saying "works on my machine, cna't be a bug" or "oh, you're on mobile. That's different" and dismissing the bug entirely.
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More likely it is acknowledged and sits and ages in the bug tracker. Like those double digit Mozilla bugs.
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More likely it is acknowledged and sits and ages in the bug tracker. Like those double digit Mozilla bugs.
that's still better than what discourse does.
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that's still better than what discourse does.
You are an anti discourse what the intercourser
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@accalia said:
that's still better than what discourse does.
You are an anti discourse what the intercourser
If @apapadimoulis turned this into an intercourse site, he'd make a lot more money off it.
Filed under: My wife wouldn't appreciate my "contributions", though
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It's a major problem in the tech industry at large but I'll mention it anyways because it's serious: Linux/open source developers are often not interested in fixing bugs if they cannot easily reproduce them
I'm not too surprised. At least from projects where a lot of the work is done by volunteers.
I would, however, be quite surprised to see this attitude from a company that is being paid to provide support for an open source product.
Let's face it, having to deal with the possibility of losing your job/contract over failure to fix a customer's bug can be a really strong motivator.
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This article makes me feel better about not bothering with Linux too much. So many nightmares listed here that I didn't even know existed.
holding a gun to people's head and saying "If you want my library you have to make yours free" is just hostile and makes people decide not to use your libarary
I use the Unlicense for ths exact reason - dealing with licenses is a pain and entire companies exist to relieve it in exchange for your money.
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> It's a major problem in the tech industry at large but I'll mention it anyways because it's serious: Linux/open source developers are often not interested in fixing bugs if they cannot easily reproduce them
QFFT. Android bugs in Discourse, anyone?
I think maybe what is really meant is "...developers are often not interested in expending effort to try to reproduce bugs."
About 40% (basis for reliability: guess) of bugs cannot be fixed by inspection; must be reproduced first. Reproducing bugs is a thankless task; at best, one can only conjecture possible causes and probe to see if one of those conjectures is valid. Usually that means a lot of time wasted trying different things in a UI, with no return.
As an example, we had a bug in our purchasing product that no one could reproduce. Half a dozen people tried off and on for three years before the exact user abuse that triggered it was discovered. Effort spent on reproducing was probably upward of 400 hours total. Which developer do you know that wants to spend that kind of time fumbling around in a user interface, trying to guess what mistake the user made?
(This is what makes the discopocalyse so wrong: the discodevs had a whole site full of idiots who were willing to try insane things in and report the reproduced bugs to the discodevs for repair. Now they got no one.)
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0-clause BSD is better, it has more tooth.
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@Lorne_Kates said:
If @apapadimoulis turned this into an intercourse site, he'd make a lot more money off it.
With blakey as the main actor? hardly
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Site's blocked for me.
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How about what Dwarf Fortress does? http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/my_view_page.php
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@Lorne_Kates said:
Liar.
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Site's blocked for me.
For me too. Firefox says it's a 'reported web forgery', but I can't find more information.
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It has some asshole ads on it. Plus it's .ru, so it's eeeevil.
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Good article.
One way to "save" linux is inner platform. You bring up this insane hobbled together OS, and then on top of it, start a managed safe sane environment to host your program(s).
When I think about it, most of the "good" linux apps that I use on a daily basis work that way. JetBrains tools are all Java apps. VSCode is on top of node.js / electron. MySQL Workbench is some mono/.NET thing, I think? A bunch of stuff is hosted through Chrome. And, of course, the entire Android user space is inside a Java VM.
Every time you try to mess with GCC, shared libraries, drivers, kernel etc., it's a disaster. So why do it at all? Let one product figure all of that out, and provide you a stable interface to build on top of. If there's any kind of future for linux "desktop", it's in that direction.
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Every time you try to mess with GCC, shared libraries, drivers, kernel etc., it's a disaster. So why do it at all? Let one product figure all of that out, and provide you a stable interface to build on top of. If there's any kind of future for linux "desktop", it's in that direction.
Didn't Miguel de Icaza want to port Gnome to Mono or something?
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Didn't Miguel de Icaza want to port Gnome to Mono or something?
Don't know.
But having a DE provide a stable interface on top of kernel seems like a possible way towards the Year Of Linux Desktop.
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But having a DE provide a stable interface on top of kernel
Mmm... how about we call it "Wine"?
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One of the issues in the article is that running Photoshop in Wine can hang the entire desktop environment.
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You are an anti discourse what the intercourser
@intercourse?
..... i've heard that name before.... where have i heard that name before?
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Usually that means a lot of time wasted trying different things in a UI
If only there were people whose entire jobs revolved around trying different things in a UI, keeping good notes, and writing up reports with detailed steps to reproduce. But where could you find such mythical people?
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Posting with
outcommentExcept to say this is the type of criticism you generally don't see in the open source community, and it's kind of refreshingThis article is critical of OSS, so I agree with it by default.FTFY
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It still makes good points.
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Site's blocked for me.
Ok... sorry? I guess? Not sure what you expect me to do about that...
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"If you want my library you have to make yours free" is just hostile and makes people decide not to use your libarary.
Dual licensing seems to be one of the business models that works with open source.
GPL helps your lib get popularity it wouldn't get if it were only commercial, and a commercial license to profit and pay bills.
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@aliceif said:
Site's blocked for me.
Ok... sorry? I guess? Not sure what you expect me to do about that...
Fix the internet. Now.
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I stopped reading here:
I want to make one thing crystal clear - Windows, in some regards, is even worse than Linux and it's definitely not ready for the desktop either.
There are 2 kinds of operating systems: the kind everyone complains about, and the kind no one uses.
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I think Linux the kernel is good enough for the desktop. I would love if Microsoft adopted it for windows.
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QFFT. Android bugs in Discourse, anyone?
No, because every one of those is easy to reproduce.
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Not if you don't have an Android phone. Which is the point: it's not that they're hard to reproduce, it's that they're hard for the dev to reproduce. He'd have to expand effort.
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That's not even a true statement, chrome had a built in emulator for Android os phones and tablets which is pretty reliable, and demonstrates the issues people complain about for discourse.
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ef-fort.