Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: [Pika-dev] Funding Drive

[Robin Green]

Trying hard to understand the PHB mindset here... I share Tom's amazement...

On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 02:04:31PM -0800, Davide Libenzi wrote:
> Sadly, stable Windows support was/is a must for my team.

I understand that kinks need to be ironed out, but let me descend into
cynicism for a moment:

People buy unstable solutions all the time. I have observed that certain
people are more open to the idea of buying from a vendor than downloading
a free tool, because there is this idea they have (which is pretty much
correct sometimes) that if it's free they get blamed, but if it was
bought they can point to the vendor and shift the blame (impotently,
because there's NO WARRANTY).

Perhaps if Tom set up an official-looking storefront with a bit of
"e-sense your enterprise infrastructure" marketing speak written on top
it would lead to more PHB customer confidence, and earn Tom some
much-needed cash as well?

> I use Cygwin for 
> other tasks and it is fairly stable AFAICT. But they just do not want to 
> install "another thing" to have Arch working.

So would it be sufficient to bundle Cygwin and tla into a single "Next > Next
 > Finish" installer?
 
I'd offer to do that for a fee and donate all the money to Tom's fund,
but I think I'd waste too much time finding out how to do it, time
which I don't have. I'm sure there is at least one person out there
on the list who could do that without breaking a sweat.

> >     > 2) The lack of an Arch server (they mean Arch protocol)
> > 
> > What a peculiar objection.  Are your evaluators just crazy or did they
> > miss something?   Arch doesn't require an "arch server" because it can
> > use any of a number of more venerable, stable servers which happen to
> > not be arch-specific.
> 
> Here same as above. What they like, is a self-contained system. A system 
> that to expose a repository does not require any extra HTTP, ssh, samba, 
> ftp server running on the machine. I honestly stopped trying.

Well, again, bundle up an ssh server and an http server, configure them
to use a non-standard port to avoid interfering with anything else,
add a control panel app, and stick them with tla into a tarball.

And sell it for $100!

Wahey, new business model!

Or is this even more metaphysical and pointless? Will they not relent until
all interprocess communication is replaced with DLL calls to create a "unified
application" (or, God forbid, replaced with web service RPCs to create a
buzzword-compliant solution)?

I'm not being rhetorical, I genuinely want to know what their "requirements"
are - i.e. what they _think_ their requirements are.

But I'm serious, if people are that arrogant - not just stupid but believing
incorrectly that they know best - they deserve to be fleeced.

Don't (just) get angry, get rich.

-- 
Robin

"The vast, vast majority of this work in unpaid and therefore lost
productivity to the economy." -- Niall Douglas' view of volunteering