Re: Free as in beer

Reilly -

>     "If you were a developer of software and giving it away for free,
> imagine getting the complaint that "Why don't you just have a pacakage
> available for my RedHat 7.1 machine?  What's the deal?  Were you lazy?"
>   You would likely feel unappreciated and angry, and that the user did
> not understand the work they were asking for."
>
> This would be a valid response if someone were giving away their Linux
> software for free.  But I don't see a lot of free software in Linux. It
> may be "free of copyright", but it's not cheap.  Somebody's getting my
> money. I'm paying a whole lot to support Linux and if I run into sloppy
> or thoughtless development, I want to be able to publicize my beefs
> about poor quality.

   Hahaha.  Point taken.  However, I did say "if you were a developer and 
giving it away for free" - meaning that I was trying to distinguish a home 
part-time developer from a company who is selling their product.  There's a 
big difference between the two, and I was acknowledging that.

   All of the distributions that I use I get for free without paying for them, 
except what money I decide to donate to particular projects.

   Poor quality is an issue seperate from whether a program is packaged as 
source or as a binary, which was what was being discussed.
   Freshmeat.net recently also made issue of the poor quality of many freely 
available Linux programs, many of which are buggy, incomplete, have confusing 
interfaces, etc, etc.
   The quality of the individual program is related to the amount and quality 
of effort it's given by those who work on the project.  Many of these 
projects are started by enthusiasts and tinkerers and the overall software 
quality of these are going to vary.

   If these programs that are buggy are packaged into a commercial 
distribution that you buy and then buy support on, then - yeah - I think 
you've certainly got a right to complain.
   But regardless - this is the list that seems to cater to rants about Linux 
and other free software, so - if complaining is what you need to do, I think 
you came to the right place.

	- Chris

-- 
Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle-15hjz6xD4c1Wk0Htik3J/[email protected]