Re: My broken dream.

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Alan Grimes <address@hidden> writes:

 > I'm a big fan of L4 and absolutely hate every GNU package I've ever
 > run into.

[...]

        And now, having said that, could you please calm down and
        consider what you've just said it for?

        To my mind, the primary end of communication is to have a common
        task done -- like developing a program, writing a scientific
        paper, or raising a child.  To make the communication possible,
        people look for common causes, ideas, values, etc.  Then, they
        establish the media through which the communication is to be
        done; they use journals and letters, they communicate over
        e-mail and phone, and they do it in real life, too.

        Now, you're coming here and saying the things that are somewhat
        likely to make the communication (with those who have
        established this mailing list -- this particular mean of
        communication) impossible.

        And I just can't understand -- what for?

 > Sure, you can come back at me and say DOS (and all utilities written
 > for it) had no features, but please don't fail to understand that
 > even though the tools were arguably weaker, they were written in such
 > a way that the *USER* was more effective at getting things done.

        I've used DOS just before switching to GNU/Linux back in 1999.
        I haven't tried to count what features I've used and what I have
        not, and I haven't tried to estimate a ratio.  However, I use a
        lot of Free Software in my everyday life, and I may say that
        almost every bit of the work I did over the last five years or
        so was started at the GNU Bash prompt.

[...]

 > In closing, I want to say that the GNU project desperately needs to
 > do some soul searching. Is it the mission of the GNU project to foist
 > a 30 year old technology, languages, and methodologies on the
 > community or is it the mission of the GNU project to advance the
 > state of the art of design, usability and performance that regular
 > people can actually use?

        The mission of the GNU project is to develop an operating system
        that is completely Free Software.

        It may be a Unix-better-than-Unix, or it may be FreeDOS, or
        anything -- it doesn't (directly) matter as long as it's free.

 > See KDE 3.5 for a positive example of free software done right.

        ... And those of my colleagues who like KDE usually ask me for
        help, if the point is to get the work done.  Rarely the other
        way around.

        Personally, I've no KDE nor the Qt library installed on my home
        computers.

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FSF associate member #7257