Subject: Re: Topic: Tables and 1.0
From: Eric W. Sink (eric@abisource.com)
Date: Tue May 01 2001 - 22:31:13 CDT
> Starting a thread for discussion of the subject "tables and abiword
1.0."
> Should they go in?
No way.
> Why/why not. Make yer cases here folks.
The following remarks are those of an arrogant know-it-all with
lots of gray hair. No offense is intended, but no humility is
intended either.
There's a very simple, obvious characteristic which distinguishes
immature dev teams from strong ones:
Strong product teams know how to finish a release
that does not satisfy all their hopes and expectations.
The software industry is filled with lame teams that don't know
how to finish anything. Many companies, including mine, make a
great deal of money charging obscene hourly rates to clean up
after bozos who ran their projects into the ground. Most of the
time, the project team sees the ship date on the horizon and
starts to get scared:
"What if people don't like version 1.0?"
"We can't ship without YYY."
"Without feature XXX, everyone will say that 1.0 is crap."
Sorry folks, those arguments don't get you anywhere. This line
of reasoning will simply prevent you from ever shipping anything
at all. In contrast, the truth is very simple:
Every 1.0 release has several goals. One of those goals
is to gather a bunch of users who will be unhappy with
your product.
This is not version 5.0. This is version 1.0. If you're not
explicitly planning to have disappointed, unhappy users, you're
doing it wrong. Scared of having unhappy users? Get over it.
Two reasons:
1. Even without tables, you'll make a LOT more users
happy than you think.
2. Right now you have no users at all, at least none that
are Normal People. (If you are reading this note, there
is virtually no chance at all that you are normal.)
Unhappy users are better than no users.
All of the above are the *general* reasons why you should not even
consider adding tables to 1.0. I'll spare you the list traffic
of pasting this content into every thread that Dom just started.
Now for the specific reasons why *tables* should be excluded:
1. Lots of users don't need them. You should make those users
happy first. (Yep, I said this already.)
2. Implementing tables is really, really, really, really hard,
especially when you've got some guy on the list who never shuts
up unless things Just Work. Crappy tables are easy. If that's
what you want, fork. AbiWord has always aimed a higher standard.
If you think I'm wrong about the difficulty of doing tables
right, do the macho thing and go code them, but don't even think
about making the rest of the project wait on you. When you
realize that I'm right, send me an email so I can say "I told
you so".
Bottom line #1: Don't make any excuses for how open source teams
should operate differently. You guys are holding AbiWord 1.0
up against the highest standard you can find. What you *should*
be doing is holding yourselves, as a team, up against the
highest standard you can find. I've watched this group for a
very long time. You are capable of being a good product team.
Do it.
Bottom line #2: Listen to Paul Rohr. He is basically always
right. :-)
PS: I am not an obnoxious SOB, I just play one on abiword-dev.
This mail is suppose to be at least a little bit humorous in
its tone, almost a parody of the most patronizing attitude I
could envision. But I still think my words here should be taken
seriously. :-) Do not put tables into AbiWord 1.0.
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