[H-GEN] Windows to *nix

[Anthony Irwin]

Greg Black wrote:

>>>Most people who write OSS are awful coders who regard software
>>>engineering principles (let alone practices!) as evil and concepts
>>>to be shunned in favour of 1337ness and popularity.
>>>      
>>>
>>I haven't really read much oss code never really had a need to but I get 
>>the impression that there are a lot that do care about the quality of 
>>the code and will spend longer getting it right then many commercial 
>>companies that just want to make a product release date.
>>    
>>
>
>If you haven't read the code, how can you possibly have an
>informed opinion about its quality?
>  
>
I guess I got the impression by mainly 3 different things. Some of these 
may have nothing to do with code quality but just my reasons for 
prefering free software.

#1 When ever I have ever contacted an free software project about a bug 
or feature request I have always recieved a response (I am sure there 
are some bad projects but I haven't come across them yet) and they have 
always fixed any bugs found and in my case added the features I was 
after. I have made feature requests a number of times and the most I 
have waited was about 4 months for a rather large feature. I have also 
made requests for some keyboard shortcuts etc which they added to the 
cvs in a couple of days.

This gives me the impression that they care about the quality of their 
work. Now I don't know if the code behind these programs is any good I 
have never read the code but the way the developers act I get the 
impression that they would care about the code quality also.

Now these projects don't tend to release packaged versions just source 
tarballs which may make it hard for new users but the programs do want I 
want and not hard to compile.

#2 I often read the changelogs of some of the programs I use and see 
them discuss changing things for improved security and redesigning 
things to allow better third-party plugin support or more consistency in 
look and feel etc.

#3 I have used software in both worlds and generally find I prefer the 
free software programs as they tend to have more power and flexibility. 
Sure sometimes they may not be as pretty and require more learning to 
use, sometimes they may not have any good documentation or documentation 
thats hard to follow but generally I can find a free software program 
for what I want to do that works just as well if not better then the 
commercial equivilent.

Also since switching to using about 98% free software I have found my 
computing experiance to be much more pleasurable again this may not be 
due to code quality but I find the programs I use on my linux or freebsd 
systems much more stable then the software I used in the windows world.

I admit that most the time problems caused was windows and the last 
windows os I used as a desktop at home was win98 and a bit of xp where I 
used to work and things may have changed in the last 3-5 years since I 
stopped using windows. But I still see tons of people complain about 
their windows computer playing up and giving them trouble. Yeah people 
can argue that they have problems with *nix too but I find once your up 
and running you normally stay that way when running as a desktop computer.

kind regards,
Anthony Irwin