I've been thinking about a way I could take Art's advice and make my criticism more constructive. The only thing I can think of is by volunteering my own time to organize a "bug squash" day for Evolution. Is there already something like this scheduled? If not, what's the best way for me to organize it? What wiki should I use? (I notice one on go-evolution.org and one on live.gnome.org -- which one's better?)
I'm not a formal evo developer, but have enough C, GTK+ and GObject knowledge to hack around, albeit probably at a slower speed than full-time GNOME hackers. Anyone else who has software experience and would have some time to volunteer to this? I'm thinking it could be on an upcoming weekend, to accomodate people's work schedules. Also, what time zone are the core Evolution developers in? Andrew On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 12:55 -0400, Andrew Montalenti wrote: > Art, > > [reply below] > > On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 12:35 -0400, Art Alexion wrote: > > While I am as frustrated as you with some of the bugs and regressions > > that you mention, I don't think it is constructive, or even in your > > self interest, to take such a scolding and tattling tone with people, > > many of whom volunteer, to provide you with software for free. > > I certainly appreciate all the effort that has gone into Evolution over > the years, and have gotten much utility out of using it. > > Free software or not, there are basic standards for software releases > and engineering that should apply across the industry. Evolution isn't > just in competition with other Free e-mail clients like Thunderbird or > Balsa. It's in competition with proprietary e-mail clients as well, > like Outlook and GMail. > > The purpose of Free Software is not to provide "barely good enough" or > "barely usable" software for no cost. The purpose of Free Software is > not to abandon all software engineering practices so that software is > released in an ad-hoc way. The purpose of Free Software is not to > develop functionality in a vacuum, without considering users' interests > and requirements. > > Many open source products released throughout the years have shown that > Free Software can be *better*, and be *Free*. These are not > countervailing trade-offs. We should strive for providing *better* > software, developed in the open, and with source freely available. It's > a complete cop-out to say, "Well, this is Free Software, so you have no > right to complain." > > GNOME is a software community like any other, filled with users who have > choices. Users can abandon GNOME software if it frustrates them and > does not make their life easier. They can abandon it for other Free > Software choices, or they can abandon it for proprietary software. In > the former case, you've lost a user, and in the latter case, you've lost > much more than just a user. So listening to these complaints, even if > they do have a "scolding or tattling tone", is imperative for the health > of the community. > > Andrew _______________________________________________ Evolution-list mailing list Evolution-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
