Re: AbiWord is too buggy for Bonita

Hi Michael,

==
OK all, please read this, and then be a bit more constructive.
==

> My criticism was meant to be constructive, I wasn't just bitching.

Your points were all well taken. Let me explain:

> However, I was quite taken aback that two people posted blunt responses
> asking for bug reports and patches.

Some people can be quite blunt, but in fact, for the Windows port, they
are correct. The Windows port _hardly_ sees any development time.

> My feeling was that if those you
> had already received had not helped, then any I might submit were not
> likely to either.

The single, main problem as stated before is the lack of developers on
Windows.

We are all excelent coders I might say, and some of us are excelent
debuggers. I myself solved a _lot_ of memory corruptions for example on
both Windows and Linux. So this clearly is not a problem.

> I was not aware that you were sorely in need of more resources for
> Windows development. What I thought was that you were happily coding
> away on Windows, blind to the effect that your work was having on people
> trying to use it on that platform.

This could not be more wrong really. The only 'real' windows programmer
we have is basically Tomas, and lately he was quite busy with other
work. You could say that during those times, the Windows port is
basically dead.

> It is all too common for open source developers to respond to criticism,
> even constructive criticism, with a request for bug reports. That
> doesn't win anyone any friends.

However, that is how the process works (at least partially). Given the
total lack of time we have (+/- 6 people work on AbiWord on a sort of
regular basis, _on all platforms combined!_), we hardly can find any
time to try to reproduce bugs ourselfs. We really need "Do 1. Do 2. =>
Die" bugreports.

> I got much the same response elsewhere
> when I lamented the loss of my contract proposal to open office's bug.

The OpenOffice process is _totally_ different from ours. Just look at
the number of mails you already got on this issue :-)

> It's important to consider the image you present to the public, when
> responding to their comments. Alan's and Dom's posts, pointing out that
> you need more help with Windows, were much more constructive.

Very true.

> I won't be able to do much to help for a few days, but I expect I can do
> a lot of good after that. I'll start by going through your bug
> database, to see what I can reproduce.

That would be greatly appreciated!

> You should know, I feel the money I spent on my spotlight license is the
> best money I've ever spent on a development tool. It might be non-free
> software, but I've been able to write some free software that's better
> as a result.

On Windows, there is BoundsChecker, which is a great tool. However, it
is around $800 for a single license.

Now this is a volunteer effort. For fun, lets consider my current
position: I'm 12000 EUR in debt, working on my thesis, and I have no
income *whatsoever*. For the next few months, I won't have any income
either.

I know good tools can help the process quite a bit, but how do you
suggest I could pay for such a license?

See the problems we are facing? :-)

Thanks a lot for your interest in helping us out! There are a lot of
people (developers and users) who would appreciate your work (whatever
it may be, and how big or small it may be).

  Marc Maurer
Received on Fri Mar 18 00:54:21 2005