Open Source Worse than Flying

george writes "In an article published on TheRegister, Otto Z. Stern makes the bold statement that "The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be the progression of open source code." Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details."I'm sitting here...wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate or maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.""

Comments

The Man is an Idiot

[eno2001]

Mr. Otto Z. Stern has a few lessons to learn about life on the internet and the cause of Free/Open Source software. For one... I take issue with his assertion that a "normal" 25 year old with a blue tooth device should even be allowed to put that anywhere near a computer unless he's a Linux user. Can you imagine what kind of havoc we'll see when the first bluetooth capable virus hits? Can you say "Beowulf cluster of all Nokia cell phones on the planet DDoSing the US DOD via bluetooth"?

Next, the guy talks about free/open source coders like they're here to solve his personal problems. Look Otto... if you can't be arsed to hit the man pages, edit a few thousand text config files and generally RTFM, then you have no business EVER using a computer for anything. Keep your interaction with technology where it should be: With ATMs and game consoles. In fact I fear that ATMs might even be too complicated for you.

How is it that someone like Otto can get in print at the Register and I can't rub two fity cent pieces together for all the writing I've done on Slashdot? I'll tell ya what Mr. Register, if ya give me a temporary writing gig, I'll take my payments in 10 packs of Cadbury Cherry Ripe Slices from down under. Do we have a deal or what?

Re:one thing's for sure...

[digable]

I work for the Otto Z. Stern.

So I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies.

Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.

But trust me.... You don't.

I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you dont know what you are talking about.

This is how bad info gets passed around.

If you dont know about the topic....Dont make yourself sound like you do.

Cuz some slashdotters belive anything they hear.

In Other News...

[Xeth]

Steel worse than Calligraphy
Refrigerators worse than Mineral Spirits
Apples worse than Oranges...

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Master of Transhuman]

"it's really nothing to be so upset about, there is much more to life than your chosen brand of operating system :-)"

So shut the fuck up already...you sound worse than the moron who wrote the Register article...

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ookaze]

Strong words aside, the guy is right

No he's not, he's an obvious troll.

Open Source authors tend to be rather bad about listening to their user base- the snotty answer is "if YOU want it to do X, then code it yourself"

No, you're wrong, they rarely do that in fact. Most are rather good at listening to their user base, in contrary to your belief. The answer you cited comes mostly from other people trying to defend the developers or to shut off trolls or astroturfers. Your straw man is not the truth.
Developers will tell you they don't intend to develop such or such function, they won't tell you harshly to code it yourself, but will ask you gently if you can contribute the code. That's the behaviour I see on the ML.

and many times reported bugs that are annoying current users are put off or ignored, often because the development version is almost ready to go stable, and fixing the bug would be "a pain"

Another straw man, stop it already. Behaviours change greatly depending on size of the project and resources of developers. You try like mad to make FOSS devs look bad, putting them all in the same bag.

And then you add a mix of false facts, false consequences, ...
You're an obvious troll too, sentences like "people try it and often run right back to Windows" are obvious examples of trolling.

I've used Linux since about 1995, and I still can't stand all the -bullshit- that's necessary to get hardware working

That's because you're an astroturfer too. I knew Linux 3 years after you, and I know perfectly well why some hardware don't work on Linux, and sure enough, it's not because of buggy FOSS.

I last used Linux as a workstation back in 2000, and a few months ago I found not much had changed

That's because you're a troll.
The progress has been amazing since 2000 (Gnome 2, KDE 3, kernel 2.6, ...) but only a troll could not see it.

I dropped an Ubuntu 5.10 CD into my athlon workstation which has a Geforce3 card in it, and a 17" Viewsonic monitor. ...I downloaded drivers from Nvidia's site, and installed them by hand, and it finally worked

And during all this time, you never realised :
- How advanced the desktop was compared to 2000
- That you had a menu option to send your hardware config and what went wrong to Ubuntu ?
So of course, you did not contribute anything.

I then tried to figure out how to change my screen saver. It wasn't in the Gnome menus- I finally found it under a "debian" menu elsewhere. Apparently my system has at least two "system settings" menus. What the...

Now you mistake Ubuntu choices with buggy software ...

There are some truly brilliant, talented people working on linux and open-source. Unfortuntely, they're bogged down in nearly useless work, or busy infighting

I think you should leave 2000 behind. Freedesktop is an evidence that what you say is false.

My favorite time-sinks are the incredibly obscure security holes that are so impractical nobody could ever exploit them

Now you assert that you are either a MS shill, a moron or both.

Ask yourself this: what does Linux do better today compared with in 2000, almost 6 years ago? I'm not talking about crap like antialiased text- I mean things that actually MATTER to users...

- Hardware compatibility
- One of the best i18n platform
- Lots of powerful tools available (all I actually need) that where not so good in 2000
- Office
- System efficience
- Live systems
- Multimedia
I forgot a lot, but I think it will be sufficient to debunk your stupid question.

Ask yourself this as well: when was the last time an open-source project you help out with surveyed its users to find out what was most important to THEM?

This week on gnome-desktop.org, there was at least one story on Slashdot too about that. Now go back to other astrotur

Re:Buggy Browsers

[goldspider]

"I've used Linux since about 1995, and I still can't stand all the -bullshit- that's necessary to get hardware working

That's because you're an astroturfer"

Thanks for making the GP poster's point for him. He raises some very valid issues based on his experiences, and your only response is to dismiss him as a troll, shill, astroturfer, moron, etc.

Is it any wonder why OSS leaves a bad taste in a lot of peoples' mouths? Perhaps if people like you put as much effort into helping people as you do disparaging them, perhaps some of the technical issues can be addressed instead of trivialized.