Hello All,
I have not received any mails lately but I can see them on the glug site. This is in response to Kenneth Gonsalves's mail quoted below.
"I am not laughing. What exactly is a bug? When, for example, in kword I save a file in OOo format and OOo is unable to open it, is that a bug? Or is it a failure of software - just bad software? As far as I know, the approach to writing software is to first write a use case, or all possible use cases that you can think of. Then write the software. Then write tests to cover all the above use cases, and release the software when it passes the tests. There will be unusual use cases and edge cases which are not anticipated and for which tests havent been written. Failure in these cases are bugs. But no failure in the main use-case.
In the case of saving in OOo format and OOo not opening it, this is not a bug. Because it is the main usecase of the particular feature. A simple test - open an OOo file, save it in OOo format and open it in OOo would have detected this, and the feature should not have been released. Yes, bugs will be there - but when a main/common use case fails - I dont think it can be called a bug and it is no laughing matter either. I havent gone into kword code to find if there are test suites, I hope there are ..."
Kenneth has echoed my thoughts exactly and put it nicely in words. Having bugs in a software is possible but after more than 5 years if a software behaves as if it was a beta and released just yesterday for the first time, then this is a flaw in the software not some mistake or attitude problem of the installing person. There is nothing hilarious about a person complaining about such grave issues in the software. The cell colour problem I had highlighted was not even connected to any proprietary file formats. It happens in Open formats.
M$ softwares may have more bugs, be less stable than nix based ones but when they are in the stable working mode, at least they do the job they are intended to do. And if FOSS fans feel it is below dignity to compare libre software with M$ ones, then why is it that whenever a problem is pointed out in the libre software, they start counting the bugs in M$ ones. Why can't they except that the particular software has serious flaws that need to be corrected.
Free software is no longer the free blood donation camp. Today major libre software and distro development is taking place through huge sponsorship and donations and by corporate participation. The programmers are compensated for their efforts, so while the institution is giving away the software for free, the developer is not doing any charity. Then why not expect quality work instead of a 'Fix it yourself' community kit.
This is in response to Krish's reply to JTD's mail and I quote...
"actually the entire problem is that people don't realise the values of running a script. and by the way running a script is "nothing to do " with programming. I think clicking on next next finish etc is not a real good way of software setup."
Simplifying a procedure means that one can do more work instead of wasting time running scripts. How would we feel if we got a mobile phone where instead of pressing buttons, we had to create and run scripts every time we wanted to dial a number or access the phone directory or any other function. The same process is happening in the background but the programmers have provided a beautiful interface to simply press a button. If scripting is so important, why don't we start doing all our home and office work in assembly language or machine code? This will give us better control of the hardware. It is up to the programmer to make software intuitive and easy to handle. It has no relation with scripting skills of the vendor or user. Let each one do his job properly.