Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: in-tree pristines fatally wounded (merge-fest etc)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Duffy <address@hidden> writes:

    Charles> People *do* pay Tom. I'm one of them. And frankly, the
    Charles> usability stuff you bring up is icing on the cake -- nice
    Charles> to have fixed eventually, but far less important (to me)
    Charles> than the core functionality -- good merge algorithms and
    Charles> such.

Sure, but based on Tom's recent announcement about his financial
situation, Thomas's implication that "Tom is not being paid" is close
enough for engineering work.

"Usability" is what turns a project into a product.  Customers demand
products, vendors conduct projects to produce products.  From your
point of view, arch is very usable, more so than the alternatives.
But Tom's financial straits pretty strongly indicate that the people
who consider arch usable now, and/or arch to be heading in the
direction of a usable product, are similarly poor hacker types, not
rich vendors or even viable development houses.

I see very little hope for Tom getting much financial benefit from
Arch if he doesn't start working on productizing it soon.  It's free
software, and it's ready now!  Nobody has to ask Tom, let alone hire
him, to make a product out of it.  What will it be: "Red Hat Arch"?
"Arx, Ltd?" "Bitmover Arch"?


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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              ask what your business can "do for" free software.