Indeed, this is the sort of fiasco Microsoft wishes that money could buy. "I'm a PC ... because Windows DOESN'T wipe all your data without asking first. "
But I think your comment is still vast overkill. The fact is, I get really, really worried every time I see a BSOD'd airline departures board or worse, an ATM booting up Windows (usually Win 2000). Don't these people know?! That there's another OS out there called (GNU/)Linux and it's fast and free and doesn't have a long tradition of crap engineering?
And then I see this and remember that while Linux is (mostly) well-engineered, it has all sorts of equally well-engineered, completely unmarked "self-destruct" buttons. And if there's anything scarier than Windows near airplanes, it has to be Windows users near Linux near airplanes.
We may have flippant maintainers once in a while, but open-source is actually a protection against that, not a liability.
Anyone can take care of this bug and release their own patches and spins with any given bug or set of bugs or set or features implemented/removed/whatever in open-source. If you get a flippant maintainer of, say, a component of Windows, you're just going to have wait until one of his bosses decides a given bug is a large enough threat to the company to demand it gets fixed. This can be a very, very long time, especially where only edge cases are affected, where you have no option to do anything but beg someone to listen to you. With open-source software, you can fix it yourself, you can hire someone else to fix it, you can put something else in its place, you can do anything! One of these options is obviously better.
> open-source is actually a protection against that, not a liability
Theoretically, but in practice open source software is decidedly worse at this sort of thing than OS X or Windows. I suspect that the profit motive is a driving factor here. You can tell that this maintainer does not care or lacks the capacity to empathize at all about his users. Maybe because they are not the ones paying the bills?
Not so much. Im dealing with a vendor right now -- we have paid support, and have spent thousands with them. As a developer, I have sent several fairly deep/detailed questions about their api and code. The response has been alternating evasions and attacks on my "style" for not using the api the way they intended.
If this is what profit motive gets me, I'll stick with "for the love of it" motive any day. There are jerks everywhere, at least with OSS I'm not paying for the privelege.
(The fact I'm using the vendor's stuff wrong is entirely possible, but the training supposedly included in our support package keeps getting delayed so I can't be certain how to properly use it).
Hmm? Could you care to explain your reasoning? Are you speaking of bug counts per lines of code? Or something else?
In my eyes, I'm glad that this bug report is in the wild. I'm glad microsoft employees are waving this around in our faces because look how many lives this bug report will save. Look how many people won't get bit by this bug now that they know about it. On the other hand, I can't explain how many times I've used Microsoft's installers, following the instructions to the T only to wind up with broken software or even yes, trashed filesystems.
Perhaps you're right. Maybe open source software is more buggy than our middle-management-driven alternatives. But at least we aren't afraid to warn people of its faults. I think the fact that we don't need to cover critical bugs like this up to keep profits high says something positive about this model of development.
> Are you speaking of bug counts per lines of code? Or something else?
I speak of incidents I've read about and incidents experienced myself. These are not statistics, but they satisfy me.
> I'm glad microsoft employees are waving this around in our faces
Where? Or is this the standard OSS "everyone who criticizes Linux is a secret Microsoft employee" line of thinking?
> Look how many people won't get bit by this bug now that they know about it
Falsely assuming that a significant number of those with the potential to be affected actually know about it . . .
> following the instructions to the T only to wind up with broken software or even yes, trashed filesystems.
Somehow most other people manage to do it without many problems.
> But at least we aren't afraid to warn people of its faults . . .
I believe Microsoft and Apple's KB systems are more complete and well organized than Ubuntu's bug-tracker.
> critical bugs like this
You may not need to cover them, but you're also the only ones who actually have them in significant number. I prefer an organization that cares enough to prevent the bugs from happening but does not disclose them to one where the bugs are disclosed then ignored with insults.
I have used at work both MSDN and Microsoft KB in the past. I wouldn't say they are more complete than launchpad (bigger, yes, more complete, no). And they certainly are not better organized, finding anything in MSDN is painful.
Oh, I see where you're coming from. Sorry, I didn't mean no flamin'. Let me clarify my points real quick, then I'll go back to my n00bishness with my 5 precious karma and my fiery tongue.
>> I'm glad microsoft employees are waving this around in our faces
>Where? Or is this the standard OSS "everyone who criticizes Linux is a secret Microsoft employee" line of thinking?
> > Look how many people won't get bit by this bug now that they know about it
> Falsely assuming that a significant number of those with the potential to be affected actually know about it . . .
I think most competent system administrators who would invoke such a script (it was not an automatic action, this bug is triggered by explicitly running a script that was introduced in the latest unreleased ubuntu version) probably read either reddit or digg or hackernews and would likely know about this very popular bug by now. Which is an advantage because now they won't be bitten by it.
> Somehow most other people manage to do it without many problems.
Guess I'm not one of them.
> I believe Microsoft and Apple's KB systems are more complete and well organized than Ubuntu's bug-tracker.
Perhaps you're right. You have more experience with them. I haven't even seen their bug trackers, and likely wouldn't have access to them unless I were a Microsoft or Apple employee. That's how most proprietary companies' bug trackers work.
> You may not need to cover them, but you're also the only ones who actually have them in significant number.
Funny, I thought all software was buggy? At least, the stuff I write sure is.
> I prefer an organization that cares enough to prevent the bugs from happening but does not disclose them to one where the bugs are disclosed then ignored with insults.
Fair enough. But to be honest, this is not an organization we're dealing with here. This is not a system we're criticizing here. This is the problem of one maintainer's silly response to a simple problem. No reason to blame the entire system for one maintainer's bad day.
No software is bug free. But I personally would rather either submit a patch (you can do that with open-source software) or poke a maintainer (a living breathing doorway into the code and the development process) than navigate through Apple corporation's or Microsoft corporation's complete and well-organized knowledge bases or bug tracking systems only to find out this programmer might not feel like fixing that bug and there's nothing more I could do.
Oh wait, I guess I contradicted myself there. Bah, you know what I meant; I'm still new to this 'arguing with people over the Internet' thing and you hacker newsies are quite an incredibly perceptive bunch.
Good luck trying to discuss with Microsoft about the implementation of some step in the Windows boot sequence. In fact, good luck trying to find out details about such implementation.
I guess "out of sight, out of mind" works for you.
What a sucky display of moderation here, -4, really ? So what if you disagree with the guy, he's backing away from linux for a fairly good reason.
I'm writing this on an ubuntu box in a microsoft free house, in case anybody suspects me of astroturfing for ms.
It should be possible to criticize linux and / or state that you are 'leaving the fold' without getting modded in to the ground.
Open source and linux are great imo, but there is still lots that could be done a whole lot better, and maintainer 'king of the realm' attitude is a fairly large problem.
It's all too often true that if your 'itch' isn't the exact same as the maintainers that it will not get scratched.
I suspect that if he had left out the "yay Open source" bit and just said, "This is why I am slowly backing off blah" he wouldn't get as many downvotes, though it would still be a vacuous statement.
Sure it is a matter of tone, but downvoting for tone does happen and I am not sure it is a bad thing. As it is he sounds like (NB: not saying he is, just sounds like) some immature fellow passing by from reddit knocking Open Source/Linux without adding any value to the discussion. I would expect a comment like "Yay Apple! Yay Steve Jobs! This is why I don't use OSX" to be downvoted too.
And even without the "yay" bit, his comment doesn't add much and has close to zero information content. It is equivalent to someone saying "this" or "upvoted" or "+ 1" or "me too" to something someone else said.
Such comments do get downvoted on HN. I don't have an opinion either way though I wouldn't care if it got downvoted to -4 or stays at +1. Anything above that would be scary!
I tend to look at the factual content of a contribution and less at the tone. It's like the RMS/Miguel de Icaza thing but in miniature, if you 'leave' open source after having used it you're almost worse than if you were a windows user all your life long, and I think the moderation in part demonstrates that. If it's just about the tone that's different, but since 'tone' is hard to gage it's a bad reason to moderate for, unless it is crystal clear that the words are offensive or rude. In this case 'linux' and 'open source' are not people, so they can't be insulted and 'yay open source, yay linux' can be interpreted as showing that not everything is good and great about linux and open source, which is undeniably true.
It's significant in this case because in closed source there is usually a solid ($) reason to keep your customers satisfied, in open source much less so because plenty of the people there do it on a volunteer basis, so you have to be 'happy you got it in the first place'.
"I tend to look at the factual content of a contribution and less at the tone."
Well even with that filter there isn't much "content" to that comment besides "me too". :-)
" 'yay open source, yay linux' can be interpreted as showing that not everything is good and great about linux and open source, which is undeniably true."
Well isn't this true about everything in the world? Not everything is good and great about $X. I (vehemently!) agree, but by itself, that isn't a very useful thing to say. Coupled with the "script kiddie" tone, it is hard to fault downvoters (imo)!
This is why I'm slowly backing away from anything to do with linux.