OSS In the Office

[Jim]

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I agree with tickticker that proprietary vendors have worked hard to
develop user communities and do have bug fix staffs.  I also agree with
Alan that proprietary vendors have good reasons to maintain their bug
fix staffs.

As in comedy, however, timing is everything.  Bugs do get fixed with
proprietary software and with free software.  But how long does a
company need to wait for those fixes?  Hours,  days, weeks, months,
years, or, if you are running NT, an eternity?

Two messages stand out - messages that we should be getting out a lot
more strongly.  The first is that free software does indeed have bug fix
teams and that their reputation for finding, fixing, and distributing
the fixes is orders of magnitude faster than their proprietary
counterparts.  The second message is the one the proprietary vendors
hide - they decide what gets fixed and when it gets fixed and if it gets
fixed - and that they are doing this for purely business and not legal
reasons.
--=20
 Jim

 Freedom is all we really want

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