Re: Delphi Bugs

From: Captain Jake (johnjac76[nospam)
Date: 07/31/04 

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 14:57:32 -0500

Derek Davidson <derek.davidson@REMOVEenterpriseblue.co.uk> wrote in message
<410bc5dc$2@newsgroups.borland.com>
> Bob Dawson wrote:
>
> > Read: There's no such thing as an open source method for major
> > projects; the bizarre is a myth.
>
> I'm really not sure what you mean by 'bizarre' here.
>
> bi.zarre : Pronunciation Key (b-zar)
> adj.
> Strikingly unconventional and far-fetched in style
> or appearance; odd.
>
> Now maybe your use of that one word is throwing me but I cannot make
> any sense of your statement.

Obviously he was referring to the "Bazaar" that a gun nut (Eric Raymond) wrote
about in the seminal book about open source, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
The truth about the bazaar is that it is almost all spectators and virtually
no merchants. The few merchants that actually are there are almost all selling
small cheap trinkets that nobody needs or wants. In that sense the bazaar is
indeed a myth. With the exception of the Gimp and a few other odds and ends,
there really is not much there that is as good as what is available for
Windows. Most of all those freebies you get with any distro is just cheap crap
written by amateurs.

>
> > Nor is there any advantage to it. Without a full owner's perspective,
> > personally branching someone else's code is simple folly, for multiple
> > reasons stated previously.
>
> Irrelevant. You CAN do it if you wish (and I know people that have).
> That's what Open Source is all about. With closed source, you do not
> even have the option.

It is most certainly relevant that branching code is folly. There is nothing to
be gained by having the code if you don't have the time and/or resources to
alter or maintain it
on your own.

> You're stripping my quote out of context. The "You CANNOT do this with
> closed source" refers to the availability of source code, as the full
> quote makes clear:
>
> "But there's nothing stopping ANYONE from changing their copy of the
> code, making use of it themselves and uploading it to the owner for
> them to review, test and (hopefully) incorporate in the next code
> revision. You CANNOT do this with closed source."

You CAN update and alter closed source programs if they provide a plug-in
and/or scripting architecture.

>
> > Or to go back to the 'topic case'--if Danny had rewritten the way
> > Linux handles library loads, would Linus have accepted it?
>
> Why should he?

Because it would greatly improve the way packages could be used in Linux. The
advantages to implementing Danny's ideas here were not insignificant.

> It was never a bug. Linux was designed to work that way.

You are dodging the issue. If you need a code change and the self-appointed
powers that rule the open source project do not deign to incorporate the
changes you need then you completely lose the alleged advantage of open source.
And since most open source projects that produce anything worth having are
mostly the result of the efforts of one person, you are subject to individual
egos (which are almost always quite inflated).

> Changing it would break existing code. Open Source is not another term
> for software anarchy. Normal professionalism still applies.

LOL. Linus fixing or updating the library loader would not have been "software
anarchy". Any *true* professional knows how to upgrade or add functionality, or
to accomodate change, without breaking existing functionality. If Linus doesn't
know how to do this then he is not really a professional.

>
> > Yes, I'm licensed for the QuantumGrid with
> > source--but I'm not likely to try to fork it.
>
> But if DevEx went out of business tomorrow (heaven forfend) at least
> with the source you could compile it for use when the next version of
> Delphi comes out. You couldn't do that without source.

I learned after Turbopower went out of business what an empty facade this is.
Sure, if you had the time, you could dig into the code and you could upgrade it
to work with new versions of Delphi or the operating system. But that takes a
fair amount of time and resources that can create a prohibitive cost. Not
everyone is a kid sitting at home in their Mom's basement coding the entire
day. The reason we buy third-party libraries is to save us time. This advantage
is lost if we end up maintaining the library ourselves. Same thing for Linux.
Almost all users of Linux are not people that have time and/or the skills to
write or update operating system code. So the fact that Linux comes with the
code is nothing more than an ego stroke for those people who fancy themselves
able to write operating system code.

>
> > If I have a problem
> > with behavior I'm not going to try and rewrite it, I'm just going to
> > report the behavior; fixing it is DevEx's job.
>
> Sure. They're a commercial vendor.

And this is why commercial software is preferable to open source.

>
> > If the problem is a show stopper, then I look for another vender--it's
> > that simple.
>
> That's over-simplified. Go find another grid for Delphi that does the
> same that QG does. You won't find one.

Unless he is using some rather esoteric features of QG, there are indeed other
grids that can be used as well.

 So, again in the scenario that
> DevEx went out of business and you didn't have source, you'd be
> severely stuffed.

Having the source doesn't help in that scenario, unless you have a lot of time.

>
> > As for personal branches, telling someone that they'd be better off
> > with open source presumes they have the time, background, and need to
> > care.
>
> Not at all. It's a security blanket. YOU have total control. Its there
> if you need it.

No, you only have as much control as you have time (and skill). I don't know
about you, but I don't have much time to fiddle around in somebody else's code,
and I have never written an operating system so I'm going to assume I don't
have the skill to write operating system code. That makes the code availability
in open source nearly useless in practice. Linux comes with source code? So
what. That is only of interest to systems programmers with big egos. 

-- 
***Free Your Mind***
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