On 11/4/2010 4:05 PM, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > Also, feel free to ask the devs *why* they made the switch, > they may just be willing to explain and give you arguments that would persuade > you it's the right thing to do. > I think that is what the OP is asking, judging from the thread title. I haven't seen such an answer from a developer yet. Perhaps it's a political decision, involving the differences between "free" and "open-source" software. Or, perhaps the new product is just more useful to more people. But, programmers aren't necessarily the best judge of that. I don't think it's a matter of either you know more than the developers, or less. Different people have different skill sets and needs. I know that there are tools out there for building packages from source code, and I wouldn't think you necessarily have to be an "uber-geek programmer" to use them. You may not even have to write a single line of code. People can contribute to the free/open-source community in a variety of ways, depending on both their skills and their willingness. Right now I'm at the low end on both counts, so I wouldn't feel comfortable ranting about how this or that decision on the part of the developers sucks, but I've seen it here (not saying on this thread). If the distro isn't exactly what you want it to be, it makes a lot of sense for someone to suggest you roll up your sleeves and make it so (a luxury you have only to a very limited extent with proprietary software), or contribute to that end in some way. But I don't think it's quite right to say you *have* to do it in order for your criticisms to be taken seriously. A gifted artist may be trying to do something in Gimp the programmers never even thought of, for example, even if she couldn't program "hello, world". But if your argument is simply that you trust Oracle more than Novell I agree it probably won't be taken very seriously. So if you really must have your OO package for Fedora in the future, have at it. There must be a few people who both care enough about it and have the necessary skills. If not, well, that's how the community votes here. Of course, they could also build and install it on their own systems from the source code and the rest of the community be damned. That also is a valid choice. For myself, I'm grateful there are enough people willing to put together a system I can just download and install for free, without contributing much other than an occasional bug report or helping out the rare user who is less knowledgeable than me. My $.02. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
