Evolution Bug-Hunt!

Matt Beale writes "Ximian is slated to release Evolution (a mail client for Gnome/Linux) by October 1st. In preperation, they are offering awards for finding bugs in Evolution! A important open project to participate in, AND i can win a palm VII, sweet!" My bug was that it kept crashing ;) October release is ambitious but very cool.

Comments

release timeline

[Proud Geek]

Ximian probably has to release quickly. I can't imagine they are in great shape financially. It could easily be that a quick launch is key to their survival, either by allowing them to show product and attract investors, or even by giving them some sort of revenue stream.

Re:release timeline

[Uruk]

I'm sorry, but why do so many people here care about the business aspects of Ximian? How is that that it's all about the benjamins? I thought it was all about the SOFTWARE!

Certainly, Ximian has business realities that they need to attend to, but I'm at a loss for why those types of things are interesting to slashdotters. When was it exactly that the site turned from primarily people interested in cool technology to people who are interested in the latest business news? When was it that we gained so many people who act as if their entire self-worth is tied up in whether or not "open-source" proves itself to be a viable business model?

Here's the reality of the situation - free software isn't going to die even if it CAN'T be made into a viable business model. If Ximian croaks tomorrow, that doesn't invalidate a single line of code that they put into Evolution. Sure, some businessman in a suit somewhere is going to be pissed off, but unless you are that guy, why do you care?

Enjoy the software. Enjoy life. Life is good! Don't spend time wondering about Ximian's revenue models, their overhead, whether or not their VC capital is dwindling, or even whether or not ESR was right about all that non-software-related business stuff he spews about "open source". Do your part and be a GNU/Linux user, and let the suits take care of themselves.

I don't necessarily think that suits and techies should be separated, but this vein of discussion is something that just isn't all that interesting.

Re:release timeline

[Khalid]

I agree with the fact that Open Source won't go away, but if developers can't sustain themselves and can't work full time on projects, these projects will take forever to complete. Freasmeat and Sourceforge are full of projects which have been dragging their fleets for years and will never reach a useful state.

Open Source software will catch up proprietary one only if companies who develop it can have enough money to fund development and R&D. Open Source can't relay forever on hobbyists programming in their spare time.

Important?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Someone explain to me why this is important, as asserted by this slashdot article. It's a mail user agent, no more, no less. It doesn't allow people to collaborate more efficiently. It isn't groupware. It's just an MUA with LDAP, an RSS viewer, and a calendar. Fun, but why important?

Why must it look so MS?

[kabir]

I have no idea of the actual functional quality of Evolution, or any other Ximian product, but that doesn't matter because I'm annoyed about something else... Why is it that they feel the need to make it look just like Microsoft software? Personally, I _hate_ the way Outlook looks, it's blocky, inelegant, and screams Microsoft. So why does Ximian adopt it? Trying to convert all the Outlook users? I suppose that might work, but it has the annoying side effect of a) still being ugly as sin, and b) reinforcing the (broken) idea that Microsoft has the right idea. I'm all for new MUAs, etc. but it would be nice if their look was at least a little bit more inventive (and elegant!).

That said, I'm still happy with mutt. It does exactly what I need it to, including allowing image and html viewing, and I can read my mail over an ssh connection from anywhere. Until someone can give me that functionality (even with a lightweight interface for sshing and a heavier one for when I'm in my chair) I doubt I'll be terribly interested in stuff like evolution. Especially since it's so bloody ugly...