Re: 'Production Ready'? Not Exactly

[Morten Welinder <mwelinder gmail com>]

On 6/7/05, Jay H <jai_guevara yahoo com> wrote:
> I think the suggestion about Bugzilla makes a point
> about whether Gnumeric (and many other open source
> apps) are "production ready". Real users don't have
> time to help debug their productivity tools. It sort
> of defeats the purpose.

Well, compare to Microsoft.  You call them and they will charge
you $whatever on your credit card before you even get to talk to
a human.  If the problem then turns out to be their fault they *might*
refund you that money.  Fixing issues could take decades or just
not happen at all.

In that light, I don't think bugzilla does too badly.

(A program that can take a positive number, square it, and end up with a
negative number, is that "production ready"?)

> That being said, I have ongoing Gnumeric annoyances
> that don't seem to be getting fixed as of 1.4.3. I
> think it's partly because mundane features that would
> be important to, say, an accountant, are boring to
> computer science types.

Not unlikely -- people work on stuff that interests them.  But before we
can do that, we need know about the problems.  The more precise a
problem description, the more likely a fix.

> Posting complaints on the mailing
> list doesn't seem to get much attention

Right.  Mailing lists are really no good at issue tracking.  You could get
lucky, but bugzilla is really the way to go.

Morten