Thread: Abiword, Gnumeric for ITOS 2006
View Single Post
Karel Jansens's Avatar
Karel Jansens is offline Karel Jansens
2006-08-01 , 13:54
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#8
Originally Posted by frethop
C'mon folks! These are applications you are getting for free on an operating system platform that has been out for a little over a month! Nokia doesn't create these applications. Real developers do in their spare time. The developers are not paid or compensated at all.

Yet you are demanding that they release their gifts on your schedule. By using phrases like "what actually is the problem why these two programs don't get ported to ITOS 2006" and "who's to blame: ... developers in question?" you are likely to actually to delay a release rather than speed it along.

Try some encouragement and have some patience.

-F
That is a crappy argument and actually harmful to Open Source. That applications like Abiword or Gnumeric are free of charge, was a choice of the developers, not a demand of the users. This choice by no means gives those developers some special status or absolves them from justified nagging from users (yes, I'm perfectly aware that I'm nagging; there's nothing else I can do).

Point is: both Abiword and Gnumeric were released very shortly after the release of the Nokia 770 and now, after the release of ITOS 2006, they seem to have disappeared without any explanation or excuse. This is not very nice behaviour towards users, and users of open software are by no means different from users of closed software.

What your remark does, is basically make people think twice about adopting open software. You see, I don't choose open source because it doesn't cost me money, and if open source implies -- as you state -- that I shut up and be quietly grateful for whatever I get, then I'd rather pay someone money to get what I want, whatever the state of the sources.