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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.
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.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
I found a bug -- it doesn't execute Outlook macro worms correctly!
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Don't forget that Evolution 0.9 is shipping as part of the shrinkwrapped Ximian Desktop product. Though that part of the suite, at least, is labeled quite plainly as a "preview release," it's definitely integrated into their overall office productivity offering right now -- no longer a separate download. (This, as of the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco.)
Breakfast served all day!
This will make programmers WANT to put holes in software, then they will be a part of this and somehow "FIND" these holes at a later date.
Go see ramdac
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?
I don't think it's that ambitious. I've been using Evolution as my primary mail client for almost a year. It's improved a lot in that time, and for the past several months it's been quite reliable and has all the features I need. I don't think that getting it up to release quality on that schedule is an unreasonable expectation.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
if i had a nickel for every bug in windows 95...
Gates already does....
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
..It'd be much cheaper if they just used the DMCA to arrest people that find bugs.. Hey, it works for Adobe.
air and light and time and space
I want to be able to sync it to my desktop. Does evoloution or any other program with all the normal features work? I am looking for a calandar, contacts, perhaps even an emulator to run it. Any Ideas about this? I mean outlook can sync with my hand spring, can evoloution?
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
apt-get install does it all in one download. Maybe more than one package but it is as close to possible of what you are asking.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
But really. I haven't seen a mail client better than Pine so far. Pine is small on the screen (80x25 or whatever you like). It reuses the entire view area in all different views. It's fast to use with keys, and keyboard control of most Linux/KDE/Gnome software is next to nothing. One of the best features of Pine is saving messages by the username of the sender (in incoming mail), and by the username of the receiver (in outgoing mail). 10x faster than moving messages to a long folder list with mouse. Yack, I hate (computer) mice (furry ones are ok though).
But it's groupware ambitions are clear. It's important not because of what it currently is (A pretty decent MUA AFAICT, vfolders are sweet), but for what it credibly promises to be in the future.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
That's not a bug, it's a feature! Seriously, though, having to download all that extra stuff put me off as well. I just know that at least 3 of those things will require me to download and install something else besides. No thanks. I just don't have the time or inclination right now.
As you said, if it was just one tarball to deal with then I'd have it running already!
Celebrate the finer things in life
Evolution actually rocks, mostly. I was very impressed that they simplified encrytion so it works just like Outlook. Press this button to sign then press this to encrypt. Very nice.
Now, how about enabling the address book?
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Ximian just recently added support for Suse 7.x. I'm not sure what you mean about supporting more than Red Hat. Currently Ximian supports something like 18 different platforms. Mandrake 8 is also now supported. You can get it here.
Celebrate the finer things in life
Q: If we are a Windows based company with Unix users, can we use Ximian Evolution?
A: If your server uses standard open protocols like LDAP, IMAP, POP, and SMTP, you can use Evolution with it. You can share addresses with vCards and calendar items with iCal appointments. We do not, however, support proprietary protocols at this time.
...
This applies to Exchange. You can use it with exchange if you're using industry-standard open protocols.
Celebrate the finer things in life
Hey! So... I guess I'm going to have a busy day tomorrow :) If you really want to get a good start and be helpful, I'd recommend that you read the Bug Day TODO list before coming by the bug day. We need lots of help- but we also need people who are going to be willing to get their hands dirty in the bugzilla, not just sit in the channel and ask when their pet bug will be fixed.
So... hope to see you all tomorrow, and hope that you'll be willing to help out in a constructive manner!
Luis Villa
Ximian Bugmaster
P.S. I'll be reading responses, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks!
IAAL,BIANLY
If you are compiling from source, you will indeed have to build a number of prerequisite libraries that track Evolution development, such as gal. This is no different than including all these libraries inside the evolution source tree -- except that these libraries are also used by other projects, and as such are independent modules. Now that bonobo, oaf, and others are stable, this isn't as big of a problem.
If you just want to install Ximian Evolution, you can easily use Red Carpet to do it -- it will figure out exactly what packages you need and take care of the whole problem for you.
Not only do I *not* mind helping a company out when they are contributing free software back to the community, but when they actively solicit help like this and give people rewards, it's only going to help them out. Also, I think having your customers hunt for bugs reinforces the idea that you're not claiming you're perfect (and thus not trying to pull the wool over their eyes about defects in the software) and also as part of the free software community it makes people feel like they have a stake in the software. Which would you rather use - a package where you felt you had some sort of stake, or MegaCorp's package where feature requests are forwarded to /dev/null and the support team consists of an auto-reply email system?
As a side effect, it's probably a smart marketing move since as I'd imagine, the Ximian FTP sites are hopping right now with slashdotters trying to download a copy of Evolution to win something.
So let's review:
- Free (as in beer) stuff (always cool)
- Free (as in speech) software (even cooler)
What a deal!
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I realize ximian "doesn't really have time" to guarantee compatability with Debian-unstable, but I know a lot of people who use unstable. If you use unstable, in general you're the kind of person who would report a bug when a program crashes.
For MONTHS there has been a dumb bug with libgnomeprint11 (their version) that makes it never install on any of my machines. Thanks guys, I hope you get those bugs checked soon, but not by me, even though I was willing.
That and they're trying to force everyone to use redcarpet when I really perfer apt, especially since redcarpet is buggy.
This isn't a flame, it's more like me crying because nothing ever makes any sense. I think Miguel & co are great folks, and I hope they do well.
Stallman alert!
woop! woop!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
This is the way software works. You build applications on platforms. In this case, Evolution is built on on the GNOME platform which is made up of libraries. It's no different in Windows or any other platform. One of the things that causes you to feel that perhaps it is different, is that free software moves so fast...so in order to get the latest you need more software than just what your distribution shipped with. That's precisely why, by the way, Ximian is selling shrinked-wrapped versions of their software. You get it all on CD's with documentation and support. If you don't want to pay money for it, Red Carpet will happily resolve the dependancies for you. 99% of the problems people had with earlier version of Red Carpet have been resolved in recent builds. If Red Carpet is too slow for you, consider subscribing to Red Carpet Express when it's available.
Celebrate the finer things in life
A rudimentary contributor report. This is not exactly the report that will be used for the prizes (this one doesn't adjust by date, dups, or a couple other factors) but it does give a ballpark idea of where people stand. Remember we'll also be giving out some stuff to people who find and mark dups, not just adding new bugs to the DB.
IAAL,BIANLY
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...
Behold the Power of Cheese!
Of course you may not have a say in the matter. The issue is with feasibility--implementing proprietary, undocumented protocols is a bitch.
Celebrate the finer things in life
gcc -g -O2 -o
../../../src/IIOP/.libs/libIIOP.so: undefined reference to `res_init'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[4]: *** [name-client] Error 1
I've logged the problem with the gnome team, but have got no reply. Well great. I can't use gnome on my system.
"Alright, buffer overflow? That's 5 percent. Poor optimization? That's ten percent. Logic errors? That'll cost ya'."
I run Ximian Gnome on my Debian 2.2 system
(it's potato + Ximian Gnome 1.4 + KDE 2.1.x).
Works fine.
If this giving away software and selling stuffed monkey's doesn't work out, why not give away the stuffed monkeys and sell the software?
I think they should add one more prize, which everyone would have a chance to win based on the number of bugs they report. I know I won't be in the top 10 reporters, and I doubt I will find the hairiest or most bizarre bug, but might spend a little more time testing it if I still had a chance to win something
Damnit, figure it out you dope:
...
That's a *lot* of users, and a *lot* of money, even if they only get a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of the corporate user marketshare.
If they, for example, get a name for themselves that prompts *small businesses* to try them out, that's good.
Small businesses hire cheap people (the good ones do) and the cheapest types usually, at the very least, know MS Outlook
So: imitating an existing interface that people may know how to use, and *doing it far cheaper* than can be done by buying properly licensed copies of the similarly featured Microsoft apps.
Seems sound to me. I hope Ximian have a really strong, confident marketing team...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
On the version of Evolution I have, this was disabled by default. Kind of nice, because it prevents those email bug tracking images from working unless you explicitly enable them. And of course, the ability to load images off the net is there, if you desire it.
Works for me on unstable; a lot more solid than the .10 release, which was prone to choking on certain messages for some reason.
Now, if I could just figure out my $%!#$$ font problem (help/about and gimp menus are gibberish - WTH?)...
Red Carpet, and evolution@ximian.com. Not sure about other locations- I'm sure it'll be some place on the web site but I don't know any details about where.
IAAL,BIANLY
int
rescue_the_world()
{
}
variety. Code that does *nothing* at all.
It is at the stage where code does at least one task well that the wheat is seperated from the chaff (except that one means wheat is another mans chaff). Before I pour considerable time into something, I test the waters: I do some small enhancement and report it to the authors. If they don't acknowledge that, I consider the thing to be unmaintained. Rejection of the code is not of a great concern, it's being ignored that hurts.
I've had pretty good luck with a number of Open Source projects which involve no paid staff at all. Especially when compared with the support for some closed source offerings.
The commercial open source thing is still very new. People jump up and down about Mozilla's failure, about OpenOffice's failure, etcetera. Let's face it, those are huge projects, and the success rate for their commercial counterparts is equally abysmal. The big hindrance for community contributions is the extremely steep learning curve for the infrastructure surrounding huge projects, and combined with rapid change that curve becomes in unsurmountable mountain. Once a more or less successful 1.0 is out, that ought to change.
Unless I'm seriously mistaken, no huge commercial open source project has reached 1.0. Unless you count Linux, but that sort of underscores the point that contributions on any level have always been possible building on a stable base. You can rewrite, say, the IP stack or the VM system, but you can do that in relative isolation, despite the complexity of the task. API's are pretty well defined.
Most of the grand commercial open source projects are just too big, with too many internal couplings. Writing a spreadsheet app is one thing (and plenty of those abound without commercial support). But keeping the thing alive when someone else is dicking with text editor code that your subproject needs is another. The horrible thing is, they need to be huge, because they need to appeal to the mass market.
If I had my way, I'd had a simple mail client, a simple web browser, a simple spreadsheet, with the minimal glue between them to make it work for me, and allow me to replace a component I don't like with another.
So, I guess you're right. Not because great things don't happen without people who are paid for writing free code, but because the marketplace demands solutions that are just too complex to deal with in part time.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.