[rt-users] Code fork

[Tobias Brox]

> 	I have to say that this saddens me quite a bit.

Me too.

> be privy to the ins & outs of your working relationship with Jesse, but I
> can tell you this -- RT as it stands in its stable version is dependable,
> reasonably full-featured, well-supported, and easy to use &
> administer.

Well, I'm quite surprised that so many actually is satisfied with RT1.
Anyway, I feel that I'm daily answering feature requests at the rt-users
mailinglist: "This is not feasible in RT1, but it exists in RT2".

> Why would you want to break that by putting forth a version
> that is (as you admit) hacky, not well supported, and a bear to install,
> all in the name of getting the product out the door faster? It is thinking
> like that which gave us the abominations like Windows 98 and XEmacs ;)

Have you read "The cathedral and the baazar"?  The success of other beasts
like Linux depends greatly on the user community.  For RT2, there is no
user community.  My philosophy is that if a project actually is used, bugs
will be weeded out quicker, and it will be quicker to spot what concepts
is actually working and which one isn't.  The problem is that nobody
(except Jesse and me) is interessted in hacking on RT2 unless they can set
it to production today.

> To quote RMS (gratuitously), I would rather use stable, well-thought-out,
> "Done-right-the-first-time" GNU tools than the more feature-rich,
> bug-full, downright scandalous offerings of those who want to ship their
> product ASAP and let the user base debug it for them.

I'm greatly respecting RMS in many philosophic aspects - but I think he is
wrong about this one.  One of the big advantage with the development
of free software is that the user base actually _can_ and _should_ do the
debugging.  To qoute Linus, "all bugs are shallow, given enough eyes to
look at it".

> I know from watching my own cadre of sysadmins and coders that conflict is
> a _good_ thing.

Yes, it can be - it leads to healthy "coompetition".  Undoubtly, there
will be some leakages of features forth and back.

> I would rather pay you to hack on RT than pay the huge sums
> that I would have to for a commercial product that I know isn't bug-free.

The annoying thing about commercial products is that you can't do anything
with the bugs.  With free software, you can and should.

> If this is true, you should continue to hack on it together. 

That's not up to me anymore.

> It is my
> opinion that software is best produced slowly and deliberately, not by
> piling ugly hack upon ugly hack.

I'm really prefering to improve a system that I can actually use, than to
build on a system that will be ready some time in the future.  When using
a product, you know a bit better what have to be done, why and how.

-- 
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