Subject: Re: Topic: Tables and 1.0
From: Sam TH (sam@uchicago.edu)
Date: Wed May 02 2001 - 04:46:27 CDT
On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 12:43:07AM -0400, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> Hi Eric,
>
> > > Should they go in?
> >
> >No way.
>
> I strongly share Eric's opinion here.
Yeah. What he said.
> >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.
>
> Good development teams know how to finish a release, yes. They know and
> accept that their release won't satisfy each of their hopes and
> expectations. But seeing as how we don't have any non-self-imposed deadlines
> or other goals, it's important to note that the normal business ideology
> doesn't exactly fit like a glove, regardless of your statement: "Don't make
> any excuses for how open source teams should operate differently..."
>
> Our luxury (bane?) is that we get to choose what goes into our 1.0 release,
> more-or-less. My point (and the point of all these threads that I've just
> spun-off) is to be a "requirements gathering." Based on the merits of each
> argument and the liklelyhood of that feature actually getting completed (and
> done correctly) we will choose what we'd like to call 1.0. It is important
> to get these things out in the open. It's also important for people to play
> devil's advocate, so that we are all kept on our toes and conscious of our
> greater goal - to produce a quality 1.0 release in a reasonable amount of
> time.
On this point, the difference between being a community project, and
being a corporate project (this is almost totally unrelated to being
free software or not, AbiWord has been both) is that we, the
developers, get to choose what's in 1.0.
It does *not* mean that the reasons that every serious application for
a general audience is released as 1.0 as soon as is reasonable do not
apply to us.
People have pointed out that Enlightenment has been around a long
time, and has only released version 0.16, or some such. Now, go
outside, and ask your next door neighbor what Enlightenment is.
>
> It's important to make the cut somewhere and for the right decisions. You
> have to draw that line in the sand. But you also have to know where to draw
> that line... The nature of this project is such that this means that we get
> to choose where to draw that line. That also means that we have to enforce
> some policy to ensure that that line is not crossed. And as you and Paul
> note, this is a lot harder than it seems.
Right. This is really hard, because we have to say, "Sorry, we don't
have that feature.". That sucks. But about an hour ago, I got this
email, which was addressed to abiword-user:
<quote>
I was wondering if Abiword had support coming for letterheads.
This would be pretty much the only show-stopper I'd see for replacing
Lotus Wordpro on Windows when I move to a linux based solution for my
users desktops.
</quote>
That person deserves AbiWord 1.0.
>
> > 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.
>
> While I've agreed with your comments thus far, I don't agree with this one
> at all. We're shipped with every linux distribution. We're shipped by
> Ximian. We go out on QNX cds. We are like #1 download on the Be sites. We're
> #2 or so on Sourceforge downloads. And certainly not all of those downloads
> are coming from people on this list :-)
Last I checked, there weren't quite that many people on this list.
>
> The number and quality of bug-reports and *surge* in activity on the user
> list of late all point to exactly the opposite: we're getting quite a few
> interested users, and a lot of them are Normal People (tm) who are trying to
> use AbiWord in their daily lives. I'm happy that many people find it
> useful!
Yes, this is definitely true. As webmaster@abisource.com, I get lots
of email from people who could only be described as normal. That
email breaks down into four categories.
0. There's a broken link on your website. :-(
1. Thanks. AbiWord is great. These emails make my day.
2. AbiWord has this bug . . .
3. AbiWord is missing this *one* feature. Note that there are many
many of these features which I hear about.
There are two groups we need to do something to make happy. The 4th
group will always have people in it. That's why people still buy
Office XP. We can make the third group become the second group.
That's what we need to do.
>
> >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.
>
> Great advice. Thank you once again Eric.
Yes. We have a great team, which has created an impressive product.
We are poised on the brink of being a more impressive product, with
lots more users. And 1.0 is going to push us over that edge.
sam th --- sam@uchicago.edu --- http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
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