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The CVS Cop-Out

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the keep-the-users-happy dept.

NewsForge (also owned by VA) has a short piece attempting to call into focus one of the major complaints of end users, the "CVS cop-out". From the article: "One of my biggest pet peeves with open source software is what I call the CVS cop-out. It works like this: I criticize (accurately) some shortcoming of an open source application either in an article or in conversation, and someone responds with, 'That's not true! That feature was fixed in CVS four weeks ago!' [...] I bring up the CVS cop-out not because I have an answer for it, but to air it out. Sometimes, giving a problem a name helps to foster discussion that leads to resolution."

3 of 486 comments (clear)

  1. Eh what ? by Salsaman · · Score: 0, Redundant
    ...and someone responds with, 'That's not true! That feature was fixed in CVS four weeks ago!' [...] I bring up the CVS cop-out not because I have an answer for it, but to air it out. Sometimes, giving a problem a name helps to foster discussion that leads to resolution."

    You mean it leads to retrospective resolution ? That is indeed strange !

  2. What's the point here? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Aside from it being a slow news day.

  3. Re:The diplomatic response by localman · · Score: 0, Redundant

    You nailed it: it's all about presentation. Of cousre, I always hesitate to criticize or give advice to open source projects since I'm getting the stuff for free, but if they wanted to manage their customer relations better something like this would be how to do it.

    Cheers.