[Nottingham] A few talk titles

[Jason Irwin]

On 04/12/12 16:09, Joshua Lock wrote:
> I do strongly believe that as people who choose to use free software,
> and are educated as to the nuances of Free, we have a social contract
> to provide constructive feedback.
And the same can be said of proprietary software.

Also consider Torvalds.  How do the Nvidia or OpenSUSE teams feel about 
what he's said?  If one of the leaders in F/OSS can't be a good F/OSS 
citizen by your definition, what hope is there for everyone else?

Perhaps this is where the F/OSS community sort of back-fires.  People 
have raised bugs, tested fixes, offered ideas/patches/art etc and so 
feel (however peripherally) somehow involved in the project and "owning" 
at least part of it.  Then, just to make up an example, Shuttleworth 
says "We're integrating your web camera with Amazon so the best tie for 
your shirt can be recommended to you", people feel "their" project has 
jumped in a direction they don't like and the emotion comes out.

I've actually read posts in support forums I frequent threatening 
developers because some bug or other manifested.  I may like a good 
strop at times; but that's just beyond the pale!

> "I paid 99p for this and it crashed once, despite running perfectly
> the other 20hrs of game time. What kind of loser releases software
> which crashes? 1 star review. Burn in hell idiot."
And the response from the seasoned F/OSSer should IMHO be:
"Well, there's the code and the build scripts; you fix it."

Actually you touch on something that I think other's have mentioned. 
There appears to be a entitlement when people get something for 
free/little and they blow-up like you point out.  Expensive 
applications/OSs crash, yet remain strangely popular.  I doubt Ballmer 
gets many "What kind of loser releases software which crashes? 1 star 
review. Burn in hell idiot." emails (or maybe he does?)

Maybe a rant is just that, a rant.  Safely ignored, or filed under 
"Attempt at humour failure".

As an aside: Cinnamon on Ubuntu is a really nice combo, although I mourn 
the loss of wobbly windows.  Simple tastes, me.

As a further aside: I just accidentally discovered that I can highlight 
a section of an email, click "Reply" and Thunderbird uses the selection 
as a the quoted body.  Outlook doesn't do that.  Neat.

-- 
Jason Irwin