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Domain: joelonsoftware.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to joelonsoftware.com.

Stories · 54

  1. Slashback: Spolsky, Mandrake, Geography

    Slashback · · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the enchanted-rock dept. · 197 comments
    Tonight's Slashback features another string of updates, corrections, etc. to previous stories. In this case, that means more on the discoveries of America, the Mandrake-StarOffice connection, Joel Spolsky and more, all below.

    Update: not everyone agrees on everything. ipoverscsi writes: "SoftwareMarketSolution has a followup interview with Joel Spolsky comprised mainly of rebuttals from the comments section of an older article on Slashdot. A quote I found interesting regarding re-writing software: 'Don't even talk to me about spending money replacing something that works. The only question that is relevant is -- what does it cost to fix it if it doesn't work?'"

    'First' seems to be relative. MattJ writes: "A week or two ago, Gavni Menzies' theory about Chinese explorations preceding Columbus were mentioned on Slashdot. He has now made his presentation to the Royal Geographical Society. According to MSNBC, the response from historians who saw it was somewhat muted. They say they need to wait for his book to come out to treat the theory fairly, but right now it looks like a tower of suppositions."

    "Or, to vote for 'irresponsible disclosure,' please press No ...". juliao writes: "The IETF has dropped the draft proposal for responsible disclosure of bugs."

    Fax early and often. jd142 writes: "A follow up to Friday's CBDTPA story. Electronic petitions and e-mail are unlikely to sway a Senator. Dead trees do. Luckily you can easily have a message faxed to your Senators. Letters are good too, so send both. This is a case where the more paper we can swamp them with, the better chance we have of killing this. And take the time to personalize your faxes and letters."

    A matter of phrasing? I mentioned that StarOffice 6.0 was due for retail release in April; Jacques Le Marois from Mandrakesoft (among many others) wrote to point out that "MandrakeClub is the first and only place in the world where you can get StarOffice 6.0 currently!" They've worked out an OEM deal with Sun to let those who've paid for a "Silver" membership to MandrakeClub ($120 annually) download the software.

    Exactly which MandrakeClub members were eligible for the payware StarOffice was the cause of some contention. "We also answer to your previous post about the ZDNet controversy. It's an interesting case of mis-information spread."

  2. Spolsky Stands Firm on Linux on the Desktop

    Developers · Programming · · posted by michael · from the read-my-lips-no-new-rewrites dept. · 296 comments
    erlando writes: "SoftwareMarketSolution is running an interview with Joel Spolsky (from JoelOnSoftware) in which he responds to this earlier thread here on Slashdot. In short: He defends his position and makes some interesting remarks on Linux and the desktop."

  3. Good Software Takes 10 Years?

    Developers · Programming · · posted by michael · from the we-will-sell-no-upgrades-before-their-time dept. · 250 comments
    webword writes: "Joel Spolsky is running an editorial where he claims that writing really good software takes ten years. (Yes, TEN years.) He explains several mistakes that are made by companies that don't understand his ten year principle. The mistakes are backed up with some interesting industry examples, so it isn't just vapor. Unfortunately, he doesn't mention any OSS/FS examples, but I'm sure we can handle that. I am mostly skeptical of his idea because I'm not sure how he thinks a young software company could possibly survive without building really good software in much less time. Spolsky mentions that new companies need to strictly control their cost structures, and that will save them, but that doesn't seem like enough to me."

  4. Good Software Takes 10 Years?

    Developers · Programming · · posted by michael · from the we-will-sell-no-upgrades-before-their-time dept. · 250 comments
    webword writes: "Joel Spolsky is running an editorial where he claims that writing really good software takes ten years. (Yes, TEN years.) He explains several mistakes that are made by companies that don't understand his ten year principle. The mistakes are backed up with some interesting industry examples, so it isn't just vapor. Unfortunately, he doesn't mention any OSS/FS examples, but I'm sure we can handle that. I am mostly skeptical of his idea because I'm not sure how he thinks a young software company could possibly survive without building really good software in much less time. Spolsky mentions that new companies need to strictly control their cost structures, and that will save them, but that doesn't seem like enough to me."