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Re: "Hyperthreading" problems


On Tuesday, December 28, 2004 5:31 PM [EST], Stephane Donze wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Thank you for your reply. You are right, I did not look at the
> code, and I certainly do not pretend to be able to fix this problem.
>
> I am sorry to have to say that, but your message is a very good
> example of the fundamental difference between a project that is
> useable and reliable, and a project that "almost works" and will
> never do more that that.

Funny, Cygwin is usable and reliable here for the stuff I use it for.

Yeah, its got bugs, but every program in existance has bugs.


> The problem I reported is known for almost 2 years (posted by Henrik
> Wist, 20 Mar 2003, subject was "cygwin commands sometime hang on
> dual-processor (WinNT-SP5)"). I don't care if it is the same bug or
> not, the fact is that cygwin has a critical problem (i.e. something
> that prevent users to use even simple commands like 'ls' !!) on
> multiprocessor machines and nobody seems to care about it. You
> cannot just expect people to "wait until you someday have a system
> that shows the problem" everytime they encounter a bug.
>

Frankly, unless the developers can reproduce these bugs, they won't
get fixed.  Its the stuck up attitudes of users like yourself that
make trying to fix bugs all the harder.


> If you guys want cygwin to be used by real people, in real life
> production or development environments, you should go a bit further
> than "I don't have the problem on my computer, so fix it yourself".
> If you don't want to or are not able to pay attention to "real
> world" bugs, cygwin  will probably never be more than an "almost
> working" program that runs on your computer the time to take nice
> screenshots, but fails miserably when users try to make it work in
> the real life.
>

<rant>
I think you really really really need to reevaluate what you say
before you hit send.

The open source/free software developers that I communicate with/work
with wrote the stuff they did because they needed an
application/library/script for a specific need, and decided to release
the software to the public in the hope that someone else might find it
useful, and the hope that other people might contribute back.

I feel the same way myself, and anytime someone tells me that what I
work on is crap or sucks and they will never use it because it sucks,
I tell them this:

You got the program from me for free.  You are not my customer.  You
do not have a support contract with me.  As such, I work on the
projects when I can, and at the rate which I can afford.  If you have
a specific request, you can either fix it yourself, or you can
compensate me for the time I spend making the changes you want if I
don't have the ability to spare some free time.

When people want me to port an app to say, MacOS or similar, I tell
them similar things:  I can't afford a Mac right now.  Provide me with
a system that I can use to make it work, and I'll do my best to make
it work.

What you consider 'real people' is obviously not the same type of
people I consider 'real people'.  I consider these 'real people' to be
the individuals who are on this list, who work on the project, and who
actively contribute to the project.  You may use Cygwin, but until you
start actively contributing to it, and helping the developers fix the
bugs and such, you have no right to complain.

I may not be an active contributor to Cygwin, but I do work alot with
other OSS projects, and they get this same type of response from
people too, and frankly, I'm sick of it.

</rant>


>
> NB: this post is not at all about "commercial software versus OSS",
> there are lots of "industrial quality" open source projects like
> Apache, MySQL, etc.
>

Yes, and those do well because people contribute to them to make them
better.

*hint hint*


-- 
Brian Bruns
The Summit Open Source Development Group
http://www.sosdg.org  /  http://www.ahbl.org


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