Re: [Evolution] open letter to Ximian Evo team: RH 6.2 blues

[Fernando Pereira <fpereira flipdog com>]

On 08 Feb 2001 18:09:47 -0500, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > I disagree. Ximian is a company, not a charity. If they want to
> > survive in the long run they must attract paying customers. I don't
> > know their intended business model in full detail, but from what I
> > have read I would assume that they expect eventually to impress people
> > enough with the quality of their software and *with their
> > responsiveness to customers* that customers will be lining up to pay
> > them for support. 
>
> Please wait for Evolution 1.0 to be released if you are looking for a
> commercial grade application.  The Evolution snapshots that we are
> pushing out are previews of what is coming out.

My original message was clear. I am not looking for a commercial grade
app (yet!). I am testing Evo as a two-way street. I get early access to
something still under development but that may start to satisfy my
needs, and I report all the problems I find. I have spent not an
inconsiderable effort reporting problems here and keeping my Evo setup
in working condition. I see that part of the price of entry, and I don't
regret it. 

> > Their responsiveness to early access customers is a measure of their
> > priorities, and of how likely they will be to respond to customers
> > (even paying ones) in the future.
>
> Not really.  We are building our teams, and the only fully formed team
> currently is the developer team.  

These details are helpful, as was Jeff's posting here recently. I was
reacting to several messages from your colleagues that RH 6.2 snapshots
would be available "tomorrow" . I understand that they are very busy,
but I hope you understand too that accurate communication with early
adopters is good marketing for Ximian. I wish Ximian the very best, and
even with the problems I've been using Evo for one month now to handle
100s of messages daily. But dealing with a broken composer that has been
fixed over a week ago rather than testing other Evo features and
reporting on the results, just because a disk is full, is not a good use
of my limited resources or yours. 

All the best

-- F