Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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.
..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
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
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
Except when I try to buy Rupert I get:
/var/www/html/xproddetail.php on line 11
/var/www/html/xproddetail.php on line 13
/var/www/html/xproddetail.php on line 18
/var/www/html/xproddetail.php:11) in /var/www/include/shoplib.inc on line 50
[snip]
Warning: PostgreSQL query failed: ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "and" in
Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid PostgreSQL result resource in
Warning: PostgreSQL query failed: ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "," in
Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at
[snip]
D'oh!
...j
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
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.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
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!
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.
Ximian is not Gnome. Gnome is not Ximian. Ximian contributes a good deal to Gnome but they are not responsible for every package. Ximian has its own priorities which include getting Evolution working right.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
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?
It's sad to see a text-based e-mail user caught in the Pine trap.
Set aside a few hours and learn to use Mutt. It's open source (Pine isn't), and it does everything Pine can do (except for Pine's brain-dead menu system) plus a lot more. You'll thank yourself later.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota