John Szakmeister wrote:
> The real complication is that we get a number of users, particularly for
> the Windows platform, who want binaries the day the product is released.
> They start scouring the list, and almost immediately start asking where
> the binaries are. They even start emailing the people who've produced
> them in the past, and *that* is where things start getting hairy.
Well, I see a business case here, since Windows Users are used to
shareware anyway, why not open some kind of zero day binary business,
for the most important OSS Windows projects.
(Including some support)
Subversion would be the perfect case for this, since it already has
commercial backing (collab-net could do it)
I am not saying this because I need the Windows bins (I mostly use Linux
and OSX), but I can see the problems there.
> Honestly, I've though of sitting down and setting up a Windows box to
> build the releases when they happen. But then I become skeptical because
> I don't want people emailing me off-list because the binaries didn't get
> produced fast enough, or because I happened to take a day off and do
> something else other than work on Subversion. It seems like everyone is
> willing to jump on the contributors that build the binaries, but no one
> doing the complaining is willing to step up to the plate and contribute
> to the project themselves. And that's were people like Ben are getting
> frustrated and he sends the response he did. The whole situation is
> just... tense. Users want binaries, but no one wants to help. Those who
> consider helping are probably turned away by the general attitude of the
> actions of, admittedly, a small portion of the Windows users.
>
I agree this is sort of annoying, that is one of the reasons why I try
to contribute to the projects I usually work with, as long as it is in
my domain. The main problem I see, is that many Windows users and even
programmers simply dont know how to build this stuff, let alone makeing
a workable installer. Face it, building subversion is not the easiest
task in the world, because you first have to figure out how to turn off
the dependencies and stuff you mostly dont need anyway unless you want
to end up in a mess of having to compile apache dependencies and various
other stuff (which you probably wont need anyway)
Add to that the fact that most Windows users simply dont have a clue,
about build files having to deal with dependencies on source level, or
the gnu tools, gcc and whatever but if they even know C++/C they mostly
only know Visual Studio, and you can see where the mess comes from, and
that those complains mostly dont come from, we dont wanna work on it people.
As I said, such things probably would be best covered by a commercial
backing (maybe getting the binaries for free, but try to cover it with
some commercial support)
> Now I understand the complexities of building the Windows binaries (I've
> done it, and I'll freely admit that it's tough to get the first time
> around). I also understand that it's tough to expect users to download
> the source and build it as a result. I wish I had a better answer, but
> I'm not sure I want to jump in the fire so that I can have my inbox
> flamed everytime a release is made.
>
> That's my 2 cents on the situation. And FWIW, I agree with you... you do
> catch more flies with honey.
>
Well.. since I sometimes work in support situations I got used to being
friendly though I
often feel like going down to the people there and try to shout at them
for being ignorant and stupid, that is just part of the field you work
in, see it that way. Often there is a reason for those questions.
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Received on Thu Apr 14 09:20:49 2005