If you have subscribed to bug 439448 you probably be wondering about the effectiveness or even usefulness of bug reporting.
It is a serious usability bug, present on a LTS release, and one year after being reported is not yet clear if it's Ubuntu specific, or the exact component causing the bug. Because it affects many, mostly non experienced users, those more than 300 comments on the bug are mostly wild guesses about causes and workarounds, digging them to find relevant information will be an expensive and futile exercise.
Do you believe that subscribing Canonical's desktop support services would help in cases like this?
If the company can win where the community fails, maybe we can setup a community economical effort to get company paid support.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Why I am still supporting Free Software?
Today I was debating with a friend the relevance of Free Software, he pointed that at the current development rate is very unlikely that Linux (most common Free Software subject) will have a significant end users market share in 50 years. I remembered him that Linux powered devices already a significant mobile market share. He noted that most of the mobile users do not care or do not know that they use a Free Software powered mobile phone – I had to agreed on this.
Later today while providing some answers at askubuntu.com I have kept this debate on my head and asked myself, why I am still supporting Free Software ?
When I started getting involved in free software development, about 15 years ago, I was a young programmer wanna-be, I was eager to learn all these bunch of languages, protocols, libraries, etc. As if it wasn't good enough I could even get help and help other people, which I always loved to do. I never managed to get a job with free software/open source (and probably will never do) but despite having a good job I always felt that working and programming with free software was closest to what I love doing, knowledge sharing.
Today I no longer do programming, except for a few improvements at getdeb and some scripting at my job when I look at code this days is mostly to identify a problem or feature. For me the (open source) code has lost the magic it had a few years ago. Thankfully to my loved wife, daughter and friends I no longer have the required free time or desire to learn/work on what is required to fix bugs or develop new features. I have lost most of the capacity to use one Free Software's fundamental freedoms “The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1)” , I can still do many things with the code, but no longer the ones I wish.
Why am I still here, an Ubuntu member, supporting Free Software yet economically dependent on and surrounded by commercial/closed source software?
I have assimilated the values of the Free Software -without the radicalism of some of it's activists-.
I believe that the ability to keep and expand such freedom is still more important than to use it.
I do not have the social skills usually required to influence or change minds, but I am sure I can reach others in ways that demonstrates the values of Free Software, which are hard to pass, specially for most people -which are not developers- .
Happy New Year 2011
Later today while providing some answers at askubuntu.com I have kept this debate on my head and asked myself, why I am still supporting Free Software ?
When I started getting involved in free software development, about 15 years ago, I was a young programmer wanna-be, I was eager to learn all these bunch of languages, protocols, libraries, etc. As if it wasn't good enough I could even get help and help other people, which I always loved to do. I never managed to get a job with free software/open source (and probably will never do) but despite having a good job I always felt that working and programming with free software was closest to what I love doing, knowledge sharing.
Today I no longer do programming, except for a few improvements at getdeb and some scripting at my job when I look at code this days is mostly to identify a problem or feature. For me the (open source) code has lost the magic it had a few years ago. Thankfully to my loved wife, daughter and friends I no longer have the required free time or desire to learn/work on what is required to fix bugs or develop new features. I have lost most of the capacity to use one Free Software's fundamental freedoms “The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1)” , I can still do many things with the code, but no longer the ones I wish.
Why am I still here, an Ubuntu member, supporting Free Software yet economically dependent on and surrounded by commercial/closed source software?
I have assimilated the values of the Free Software -without the radicalism of some of it's activists-.
I believe that the ability to keep and expand such freedom is still more important than to use it.
I do not have the social skills usually required to influence or change minds, but I am sure I can reach others in ways that demonstrates the values of Free Software, which are hard to pass, specially for most people -which are not developers- .
Happy New Year 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)