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
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
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
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
Because Evolution is one of if not the premiere Workgroup and PIM free software solution. You can schedule appointments with other Evolution users or with any client supporting the iCalendar standard (Outlook/Exchange, Lotus Notes...). It offers the best integration I've seen amongst mail/PIM suites, and best of all it handles extremely large volumes of mail better than anything I've used. When you get 200+ emails a day, this is a lifesaver. Its Filter/vFolder capabilities are pretty powerful.
Celebrate the finer things in life
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.
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?