RE: graphical file managers

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Pablo Vieira wrote:

> Brad Hazledine wrote:
> 
> >The Linux users groups are also very helpful and knowledgeable provided
> that you do not
> >provoke them.
> 
> This is key to understand the Linux model, probably. When you pay for
> what you use, you have the right to feel bad when your software doesn't
> work and "yell" at the people that made you pay for something that
> doesn't work.
> 
> The problem with Linux is that even if you paid your distro manufacturer
> for the box, he's not responsible for the software included in the
> distro, so who's the one to blame if something doesn't work?

If you've paid for your distro, and preferably if you have a proper support
contract, then you have every right to yell at the distro vendor when they
don't deliver the level of support you've paid for. It's up to the market to
then determine which distro vendors deliver on their promises, and which
just want to flog CDs full of other people's software for large margins.

> Is it reasonable to expect that a frustrated corporate user goes hunting
> for responses in user groups and tries to hide his or her frustration so
> he doesn't "provoke" the gurus?

Would you try and get "corporate support" for SAP, or Oracle from a
volunteer user group? Get your wallet out and pay for proper support -
either from the vendor, or a local business that you feel you can trust.

> Do Linux developers asume any responsibility at all for the software
> they write and offer to others? Is there any guarantee?

Most licenses explicitly state "no guarantees". The developers (as opposed
to the distro vendors) gave their code away for free, so why should anyone
expect a warranty, especially when most problems are caused by (attempted)
usage, rather than implementation flaws? That said, if you are reasonably
polite, and offer useful debug info and/or patches, most developers are
*much* more responsive than developers of proprietary software.

> Regards,
> Pablo

Best Regards,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher      Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK                      Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950                         <http://www.assursys.com/>