Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2022 21:31:01 +0100 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org> To: Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Using a FreeBSD desktop was somehting about dog food Message-ID: <20220328213101.b4e8a7c447964ba025d30883@sohara.org> In-Reply-To: <20220328121115.7d368d32@bigus.dream-tech.com> References: <38b7f44-6d54-fec6-c1f0-d3609d301687@safeport.com> <20220327132420.201da20c@archlinux> <20220327212421.adaee52ba708a058e5ef6bd8@sohara.org> <4f3edca7-45ec-b8ae-45dc-9648cced9bfe@kicp.uchicago.edu> <772cf4b0-9e26-3126-ec4b-bd91986883dd@kicp.uchicago.edu> <20220328055449.8a30774a61f3b298e778ae68@sohara.org> <20220328121115.7d368d32@bigus.dream-tech.com>
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On Mon, 28 Mar 2022 12:11:15 -0700 Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org> wrote: > On Mon, 28 Mar 2022 05:54:49 +0100 > "Steve O'Hara-Smith" <steve@sohara.org> wrote: > > To those of us who once despaired of saving up the thousand[1] > > or so a *binary* unix license without networking, compilers or text > > processing suites (throw in another couple of hundred each for those) > > or spent weeks getting X11R5 to work on an unsupported platform (you > > may imagine how good it was to see that X move on a black screen for > > the first time after weeks of fighting library, compiler and make > > limitations) complaints that what's available for free lacks the gloss > > and polish of commercial software seem churlish and ungrateful. > > Using FreeBSD on a server grants you very measurable benefits in terms of > reliability, security, and surprises. Thus, it is logical to expect the > same ideas on a desktop. I've been on a FreeBSD desktop for easily 25 > years (I'm not counting, but I started this journey in the 90s.) Agreed and IME that's what I get. > So over these years, what many call "Gloss and polish" has turned into > "acceleration and usability". There's an entire generation for whom saying > "emacs is my IDE" is met with hidden laughter and scorn, as this I usually say unix is my IDE, and since I'm always among the most productive people at work nobody laughs. > generation has fancy tools that (for example) allow one to refactor an > entire code base with the flick of a button so you can change that > function name to something more readable than "doTheThing". Expose > features on the desktop are another example. For sure IDEs like Eclipse - I'm often told it is impossible to write in Java without one (I've equally often proven them wrong - but if I had to write a lot of "Enterprise" style Java I might change my mind). They run fine on FreeBSD AFAIK. > What I don't understand is the implication that we are somehow ungrateful > and rude if we have to settle for what sometimes is -far- less. By > "settle" I mean the idea of "we should just shut up and take what we are > given". When we are talking about the product of volunteers using their free time and companies donating money, equipment and/or time then yes it is extremely rude to think that they should concentrate on what someone else wants done rather than what they want to do with their own time and resources. Open source projects have become so big that we tend to forget that for the most part they are the result of people scratching their own itches in their free time and freely giving away the results of their work. There is absolutely no reason to expect them to do anything other than precisely what they want to. When I first used FreeBSD it lacked support for QIC tape drives, so I started in on writing a driver for my tape drive and had it just starting to work when a fully finished one landed in the tree from somewhere else. When the window manager that I still use to this day lacked some features that I wanted I talked about it with the author and he agreed to accept patches if I could produce them - which I did. > Worse, these expressions are often sharing threadspace with the idea of > "Why don't more people use FreeBSD?". Irony, anyone? > > To be clear, my intent in this message is not an advocacy of Linux or > other commercial OSes, or a dis-advocacy of FreeBSD. This is an appeal to > tolerance. Those who bitterly complain about some missing feature might > actually have a point or they are truly frustrated. Right, so what do they do about it ? Do they work on making the feature ? Do they set up a bounty to pay someone else to work on it ? Do they try and organise a team to do it ? Do they even go so far as to define some concrete achievable goals or write some actionable bug reports. Some do of course and that's why things happen but IME most of the bitterly complaining do none of the above and expect someone else to solve their problem or they point to where it's already solved and get surprised when people suggest they use the solution that exists. > Would it really cost > so much for developers to -at the very least- acknowledge some of this We the users are the developers, that's how it all started. > frustration, to say nothing of -addressing- these issues? Their freedom to choose for themselves what they do with their free time. That's a big thing. Many of them may share the frustrations but have their hands full with what they're already doing. So if something is not being addressed it means that there is nobody who cares enough and has the time and the skills to address it. Which means that for it to happen someone who does has to step up and make it happen and not someone who is already giving their time to something they feel is more important/interesting/doable/fun/... they're doing their bit in their own way. Bottom line if you want "the FreeBSD developers" to do something they're not doing then you need to find and motivate some more developers, not harangue the people giving their time for free because if it stops being fun for them they'll stop doing it. -- Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org>
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