This is my favourite quote - it *needs* to be said more than it should. I figure if I beat enough people with it and eventually someone will say it to me (when I turn into a manager perhaps).
It's funny you should say that. I knew a developer that maintained his (contract) project 90% complete for almost a year whilst, perversely perhaps, working solid hours on it.
Yup, he was crap and eventually fired and the project was scrapped. BUT, he stills views it as a success.
A lot depends on the code. I have one other developer in my team and we work on 300k lines of C++. It's neat code, well laid out and easy to maintain so two is just fine. It was just me for a while [phew].
I've seen smaller projects need more developers just coz the code was foul. Cheaper to start again - which is the essence of this story I guess;)
Yeah, but if the boss can figure out the modules then surely he can figure out the lines of code. We can then deduce the bugs (1 per 10 lines right?) and write those first, test them all early and get them fixed.
Then we just get on and write the 9/10 lines that are good, avoid any further testing and ship the thing.
Sounds like a plan but really it's just the vodka talking;)
Here's a better plan; When you manager (or marketdroid) comes in and starts spouting they "want this by then" tell them there are three options 1) Features, 2) resources and 3) time. They can pick the two they want without your input and you manage the third without their input.
*That's* a plan.
If you like this then you should read...
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Hospital Robots
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It's still not a fact. I can't stand NS (ugly, slow pile of crap) so they didn't harm me. If my OS had come preconfigured with NS then that would be harmful.
Their motive 'might' have been "to make more money" followed by "ensuring no-one encroaches on their turf" - neither of which means their competitors must have had good products.
You don't need good competitors for you to want create a monopoly. The two aren't related.
Your inference falls way short of making into a fact.
Are you saying that the court concluded that other products were better? I thought they were determining whether MS had monopolised their position and were doing a little more than a government sponsored product review.
I'm not sure they're educated enough to conclude what I think makes a better product - though they may speak for you of course.
"I suppose as long as there is a non-techie crowd out there, or just people who want low maitenence in genral will still pay for the support."
Further, as we are living in an ideal world for a moment also consider software that is so well designed and written that it needs no support. What to do then?
"Perfect software" should be the goal of all software developers but where support is a commercial activity you have a clear conflict of interests.
If the information is freely available, and I use google and deja (poor deja), then it's clear that's it's competition for "pay" support. Either it is or it isn't. I think it is.
Imagine a world without the need for tech support staff, just log in to IRC, ask your question and get the answer - cool? Yup, and it exists right now. Only problem is that, like Linux, it's a reserve of the true techies...for now at least.
The problem is, as I see it, that if support is one of the cornerstones of OSS then "open support" as detailed above would kill companies like RH whose bulk income is support contracts.
No-one could charge support for mass-market product like distros when support is available for free.
Better like Lotus 123? Petty squabbling of look'n'feel didnt do they much good. Neither did resting on their laurels of DOS good fortune. They stopped innovating and paid the penalty, they can crow about lack of access to APIs but the reality of it was quiet different.
Windows for Workgroups killed Netware dead. Not because MS monopolised but because Netware needed a phd to keep the crap running.
There were *many* competing products (Wordstar anyone) in all categories but they were all shite and missed the mark.
OS/2 was great, I loved using it, and it was a real competitor...and to this day I can't I understand how IBM were *so* stupid.
The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history.
"The free market fails to account for the fact that most people are stupid, and will buy whatever crap everyone else is buying."
You're in that group you know.
I don't feel stupid and I'm pretty sure I'm not so I don't fall into your group, thankfully.
People may think you're stupid for worshiping your computer, letting it teach you it's arcane language so you can converse down at it's level. Endlessly tweaking your computer in your basement for hours at a time whilst Normal People are in the Big Blue Room gettin' a life;-)
People buy mass market products because that's who mass market products are aimed at. You, on the other hand, may be an edge-case. This is neither better nor worse, just different from the VAST majority.
I guess custom car owners would consider you to be a mass market stupid zombie for buying Ford too. And ultimately, if you didn't write/make it yourself you *are* a consumer of mass market 'something'
MS aims at the mass market and they do a fine job of marketing their products for way, same for AOL, same for Dell etc. Unsurprisingly this is also where the money is.
MS's various *bad* marketing strategies don't make their products bad - certainly their products meet the demands of the mass market quite nicely and they have done a good job of training the mass market to choose MS...just like having an "Intel Inside" (I have dual Athlon 1800+ hehe).
If you stick a ribbon on it it still looks like commercial suicide.
I see no motivation for MS to do it. Besides, most of what you suggest could be achieved with standards and open specs. so again there is little incentive. MS won't kill the golden goose.
"Wanting a non-complex computer, is wanting the impossible..."
But it's what most people want. Get over it coz it's that force that drives the market.
You're happy running whatever you like and so are the AOL subscribers in their "Windows AOL Internet". Capture them and you could win the game. Ignore them and MS (and closed source) has already won.
In it's current state OSS isn't competition for close source.
"Normal people", the ones that actually buy the bulk of closed software, have never heard of OSS and won't use it even if they had. I base this on a quick straw poll of non-IT friends and relatives who also own and use computers. To them Linux and Amiga have roughly the same weight, FreeBSD sounds like a first hit drug for free.
If they were competition then I for one would use Linux to ensure my skills stay current. I cannot see how Linux will compete with MS Windows.
The arguments about many eyes over the code simply don't hold true on MS's ability to simply hire "another 100 coders to review the code".
Add the ability for MS to hire 100 quality designers to do nothing more than "talk" about design, a couple of hundred testers and follow it up with $60BILLION in marketing and I think we have a clear winner.
OSS needs to do a lot of maturing, and maybe even leap-frogging closed source in terms of *how* software is designed, and then how it's developed. I'm no fan of OSS, I've made it clear many times, but the OSS community has an opportunity that right now it's squandering.
Yup, I used the 'design' word because I see precious little of it in current OSS offerings (not that I've seen a lot mind you).
Better design-for-people applies to both open and closed communities, and OSS could lead the way if only there were software designers (UI and interaction) willing to work for free.
I'll concede that bad design is platform independent *but*, due to the nature of Linux (where most OSS lives), it appears to me that bad design is more prevelent in OSS "I want a feature, I'll add it dammit" or "You know where the source is, go hack" - neither of which makes for a product that is user-centric.
I'll agree that in practice competition promotes innovation.
However, in terms of stability I don't believe that stability in FBSD or Linux has affected stability in Windows. Windows has always had bad press re stability, since before Linux was but a mere twinkle in it's papa's eye. They've had a problem and they know what the solution is - maybe they had been working on it for a long time.
I've worked professionally in software for over ten years, 3 of which was commercial unix - all in C/C++. I've always worked on software that is sold (apart from R&D, which was eventually sold). I think you are wrong and my personal experience backs it up;-)
People buy stock because they want to make money. It's that simple, truly it is. Some people will invest in 'green' stocks e.g. not arms manufacturers or drugs companies - and this may be true of a *tiny* percentage of RH stock owners.
Some companies don't plan to make money, and these are called charities. It's unlikely that RH would be where they are if they had become a truly benevolent organisation;)
I personally find it very hypicritical. It appears to me that the majority of the mouth-pieces for OSS and FSF are in a happy financial state...so they have nothing to lose by wanting to kill my salaried position. I'm just waiting for one of them to write a book and sell it...
"To install the nVidia drivers in Linux I had to extract two tarballs, type 'make' twice, and change one line in a config file. Not exactly rocket science."
Yes it is, it's *exactly* that. When you come to realise this simple fact perhaps you'll stop accepting cruddy software that demands you learn 'tricks' like that. And whilst you continue doing it you are nothing more than a trained monkey.
The computer is a tool, nothing more. You seem to have elevated it to being an object of worship, learning the required chants before it grants you a morsel of emacs.
And whilst I'm ranting; Windows (XP) isn't much better in *many* areas...but I sure don't need to "monkey see, monkey do" like you linux geeks.
Clean this linux shit up and 'normal people' will use it.
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This is my favourite quote - it *needs* to be said more than it should. I figure if I beat enough people with it and eventually someone will say it to me (when I turn into a manager perhaps).
It's funny you should say that. I knew a developer that maintained his (contract) project 90% complete for almost a year whilst, perversely perhaps, working solid hours on it.
Yup, he was crap and eventually fired and the project was scrapped. BUT, he stills views it as a success.
You know who you are!
A lot depends on the code. I have one other developer in my team and we work on 300k lines of C++. It's neat code, well laid out and easy to maintain so two is just fine. It was just me for a while [phew].
;)
I've seen smaller projects need more developers just coz the code was foul. Cheaper to start again - which is the essence of this story I guess
Yeah, but if the boss can figure out the modules then surely he can figure out the lines of code. We can then deduce the bugs (1 per 10 lines right?) and write those first, test them all early and get them fixed.
;)
Then we just get on and write the 9/10 lines that are good, avoid any further testing and ship the thing.
Sounds like a plan but really it's just the vodka talking
Here's a better plan; When you manager (or marketdroid) comes in and starts spouting they "want this by then" tell them there are three options 1) Features, 2) resources and 3) time. They can pick the two they want without your input and you manage the third without their input.
*That's* a plan.
"robo sapiens" by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio(sp?) Amazon link for the lazy (no affiliate)
A very entertaining read.
I like this story and certainly brings home the reality of current commercial robots. Read the book, it's worth it.
Where are the ones of him hopping out of his car to buy more film - you'd of thought it would make a great Kodak moment, wouldn't ya?
I guess because despite the good intentions of GPL it *does* have restrictions (read: it's viral).
So, when choosing a library/toolset for my next project which would I choose a) the restrictive one or b) the not-so restrictive one?
Hmm, a difficult choice.
There is little to be gained from releasing as BSD and then as GPL IMO, I'd only choose BSD.
It's still not a fact. I can't stand NS (ugly, slow pile of crap) so they didn't harm me. If my OS had come preconfigured with NS then that would be harmful.
Their motive 'might' have been "to make more money" followed by "ensuring no-one encroaches on their turf" - neither of which means their competitors must have had good products.
You don't need good competitors for you to want create a monopoly. The two aren't related.
Your inference falls way short of making into a fact.
..and for the geeks amongst us "Feeding pigeons: How to get on with managers"
"He was so learned that he could name a horse in 9 languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on" Your dog or your management?
I tried it but it crashed...I thought I'd have a hack at it so I contacted the author. I got a less than lukewarm response to my eagerness to help.
Seems to me the project is going no where.
Anyone know of a similar project I could help out on (without MFC would be better )?
Are you saying that the court concluded that other products were better? I thought they were determining whether MS had monopolised their position and were doing a little more than a government sponsored product review.
I'm not sure they're educated enough to conclude what I think makes a better product - though they may speak for you of course.
I did not know that.
Are the texts open source?
"I suppose as long as there is a non-techie crowd out there, or just people who want low maitenence in genral will still pay for the support."
Further, as we are living in an ideal world for a moment also consider software that is so well designed and written that it needs no support. What to do then?
"Perfect software" should be the goal of all software developers but where support is a commercial activity you have a clear conflict of interests.
If the information is freely available, and I use google and deja (poor deja), then it's clear that's it's competition for "pay" support. Either it is or it isn't. I think it is.
Imagine a world without the need for tech support staff, just log in to IRC, ask your question and get the answer - cool? Yup, and it exists right now. Only problem is that, like Linux, it's a reserve of the true techies...for now at least.
The problem is, as I see it, that if support is one of the cornerstones of OSS then "open support" as detailed above would kill companies like RH whose bulk income is support contracts.
No-one could charge support for mass-market product like distros when support is available for free.
Better like Lotus 123? Petty squabbling of look'n'feel didnt do they much good. Neither did resting on their laurels of DOS good fortune. They stopped innovating and paid the penalty, they can crow about lack of access to APIs but the reality of it was quiet different.
Windows for Workgroups killed Netware dead. Not because MS monopolised but because Netware needed a phd to keep the crap running.
There were *many* competing products (Wordstar anyone) in all categories but they were all shite and missed the mark.
OS/2 was great, I loved using it, and it was a real competitor...and to this day I can't I understand how IBM were *so* stupid.
The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history.
"The free market fails to account for the fact that most people are stupid, and will buy whatever crap everyone else is buying."
;-)
You're in that group you know.
I don't feel stupid and I'm pretty sure I'm not so I don't fall into your group, thankfully.
People may think you're stupid for worshiping your computer, letting it teach you it's arcane language so you can converse down at it's level. Endlessly tweaking your computer in your basement for hours at a time whilst Normal People are in the Big Blue Room gettin' a life
People buy mass market products because that's who mass market products are aimed at. You, on the other hand, may be an edge-case. This is neither better nor worse, just different from the VAST majority.
I guess custom car owners would consider you to be a mass market stupid zombie for buying Ford too. And ultimately, if you didn't write/make it yourself you *are* a consumer of mass market 'something'
MS aims at the mass market and they do a fine job of marketing their products for way, same for AOL, same for Dell etc. Unsurprisingly this is also where the money is.
MS's various *bad* marketing strategies don't make their products bad - certainly their products meet the demands of the mass market quite nicely and they have done a good job of training the mass market to choose MS...just like having an "Intel Inside" (I have dual Athlon 1800+ hehe).
"internet and hit irc or some newsgroups"
Open support? Competition for closed support?
If you stick a ribbon on it it still looks like commercial suicide.
I see no motivation for MS to do it. Besides, most of what you suggest could be achieved with standards and open specs. so again there is little incentive. MS won't kill the golden goose.
"Wanting a non-complex computer, is wanting the impossible..."
But it's what most people want. Get over it coz it's that force that drives the market.
You're happy running whatever you like and so are the AOL subscribers in their "Windows AOL Internet". Capture them and you could win the game. Ignore them and MS (and closed source) has already won.
In it's current state OSS isn't competition for close source.
;-)
"Normal people", the ones that actually buy the bulk of closed software, have never heard of OSS and won't use it even if they had. I base this on a quick straw poll of non-IT friends and relatives who also own and use computers. To them Linux and Amiga have roughly the same weight, FreeBSD sounds like a first hit drug for free.
If they were competition then I for one would use Linux to ensure my skills stay current. I cannot see how Linux will compete with MS Windows.
The arguments about many eyes over the code simply don't hold true on MS's ability to simply hire "another 100 coders to review the code".
Add the ability for MS to hire 100 quality designers to do nothing more than "talk" about design, a couple of hundred testers and follow it up with $60BILLION in marketing and I think we have a clear winner.
OSS needs to do a lot of maturing, and maybe even leap-frogging closed source in terms of *how* software is designed, and then how it's developed. I'm no fan of OSS, I've made it clear many times, but the OSS community has an opportunity that right now it's squandering.
Yup, I used the 'design' word because I see precious little of it in current OSS offerings (not that I've seen a lot mind you).
Better design-for-people applies to both open and closed communities, and OSS could lead the way if only there were software designers (UI and interaction) willing to work for free.
I'll concede that bad design is platform independent *but*, due to the nature of Linux (where most OSS lives), it appears to me that bad design is more prevelent in OSS "I want a feature, I'll add it dammit" or "You know where the source is, go hack" - neither of which makes for a product that is user-centric.
I'll agree that in practice competition promotes innovation.
However, in terms of stability I don't believe that stability in FBSD or Linux has affected stability in Windows. Windows has always had bad press re stability, since before Linux was but a mere twinkle in it's papa's eye. They've had a problem and they know what the solution is - maybe they had been working on it for a long time.
I've worked professionally in software for over ten years, 3 of which was commercial unix - all in C/C++. I've always worked on software that is sold (apart from R&D, which was eventually sold). I think you are wrong and my personal experience backs it up
People buy stock because they want to make money. It's that simple, truly it is. Some people will invest in 'green' stocks e.g. not arms manufacturers or drugs companies - and this may be true of a *tiny* percentage of RH stock owners.
;)
Some companies don't plan to make money, and these are called charities. It's unlikely that RH would be where they are if they had become a truly benevolent organisation
I personally find it very hypicritical. It appears to me that the majority of the mouth-pieces for OSS and FSF are in a happy financial state...so they have nothing to lose by wanting to kill my salaried position. I'm just waiting for one of them to write a book and sell it...
"To install the nVidia drivers in Linux I had to extract two tarballs, type 'make' twice, and change one line in a config file. Not exactly rocket science."
Yes it is, it's *exactly* that. When you come to realise this simple fact perhaps you'll stop accepting cruddy software that demands you learn 'tricks' like that. And whilst you continue doing it you are nothing more than a trained monkey.
The computer is a tool, nothing more. You seem to have elevated it to being an object of worship, learning the required chants before it grants you a morsel of emacs.
And whilst I'm ranting; Windows (XP) isn't much better in *many* areas...but I sure don't need to "monkey see, monkey do" like you linux geeks.
Clean this linux shit up and 'normal people' will use it.
No, no, no. We all know it should be Monkey Boy - if he codes like he dances then his style will fit right in with the rest of the OSS junk.