Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Robert Dewar]

> please allow me to write exactly this lines to you. i know you are
> all doing a nice job on gcc 3.1 but i feel fooled by your gcc maintainer
> a lot of date shifts 14th april to 1st may then it was said to be
> released in the next days, last weekend mark mitchell said that he is
> doing the packages after weekend and now we have wednesday. either you
> are fooling us or you are doing this to get time to fix other shit.
> either you fucking hell release that damn gcc 3.1 that i am waiting
> for - for over a month now that i really like to have or if the work
> is to hard for you (like life of a maintainer beeing hard) then hand
> over the work to someone else who is capable to NOT pissoff their
> people.

Messages like this remind me of an incident in my theater group a few
years ago. We gave a way some tickets, and one lady came to complain
about her ticket.



"It's too far away, I can't see"

"Well madam, I'm sorry, but this is a free ticket and that's the best
available"

"I'm not complaining about the price, the price is satisfactory, but
the location is not"

:-)

It's always amazing how people expect *someone* *somewhere* to do things
for them on the net without expecting to contribute $$$ or effort in
return. 

Once I had an angry call from some company that they could not find Y2K
compliance information for some port of GNAT they had got from somewhere
on the net. I explained that we could not provide any kind of statement
since we did not support that version and did not even know what he had.

He was furious "Well then who *CAN* give me a Y2K compliance statement
for this product. I have to have one. It's outrageous that you won't
stand behind your product ...."

Oh well, all part of the day-to-day fun in Free Software open development.

Perhaps we should appoint klausberger in charge of fixing the remaining
problems, and demand that he do it by say, 5pm tomorrow evening or else :-)

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Daniel Berlin]

> 
> He was furious "Well then who *CAN* give me a Y2K compliance statement
> for this product. I have to have one. It's outrageous that you won't
> stand behind your product ...."
> 
> Oh well, all part of the day-to-day fun in Free Software open development.
> 
> Perhaps we should appoint klausberger in charge of fixing the remaining
> problems, and demand that he do it by say, 5pm tomorrow evening or else :-)

I'm with you on this one.

I think we should post something to the GCC news, too.

"GCC 3.1 release date just a joke.

	We was just kiddin, y'all.  We're way too stupid and lazy (after 
all, the life of a maintainer is very easy) to get a release  out on time. 
Hopefully we'll get it done by 2004.  It all depends on klaus berger 
<klausberger@email.com>, who has generously volunteered to fix all  
remaining bugs." 

file under N for "non-contributing ungrateful bastard".

--Dan
 > 

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[DJ Delorie]

> Once I had an angry call from some company that they could not find Y2K
> compliance information for some port of GNAT they had got from somewhere
> on the net. I explained that we could not provide any kind of statement
> since we did not support that version and did not even know what he had.

I had a similar problem with DJGPP - everyone kept asking me for Y2K
statements.  I got tired of telling them that DJGPP is a volunteer
project and we haven't decided that Y2K was important enough to *us*
to bother with a statement, so I wrote one.  The requests stopped dead:

	http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/y2k.html

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Aaron Lehmann]

On Wed, May 15, 2002 at 10:30:20AM -0400, Daniel Berlin wrote:
> I think we should post something to the GCC news, too.

Submit a patch.

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Tim Hollebeek]

> 	We was just kiddin, y'all.  We're way too stupid and lazy (after 
> all, the life of a maintainer is very easy) to get a release  out on time. 
> Hopefully we'll get it done by 2004.  It all depends on klaus berger 
> <klausberger@email.com>, who has generously volunteered to fix all  
> remaining bugs." 

And of course, this should all be blamed on it being open source.
After all, release dates for commercial software NEVER slip.  Right?
=)

Kudos for gcc for attempting a regular release schedule.  It'll get
easier as people get used to it, I'm sure ...

-Tim

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Robert Dewar]

> Please don't whack the user.  It is not his fault he expected it, it
> is our fault.

In the GNAT world, we never ever give even a hint of schedules for public
versions of GNAT. People keep asking us for rough estimates, but we are
adamant in never giving schedules. Why not? Because all work on public
releases (including work on the FSF version) has lower priority than
funded work for our customers, which can at any point preempt the work
in getting public versions out. We don't apologize for this attitude
at all, since it's what keeps ACT financially viable, and the having    
a strong ACT is in the long term very important for everyone in the
Ada community, including students, hobyists, free software builders   
and others using the public versions.

We figure that the only way you get even estimates of time schedules is
by being a paying customer, and if you really need hard deadlines, then
specific contracts need to be negotiated.

The GCC development is largely done by volunteers who ultimately mostly
have the same kind of priorities on their time, so despite best intentions,
they may not be able to follow through with commitments on time.

So perhaps what is needed on this list is a constant reminder that any
schedules announced are for the benefit of *developers* and are for the
purposes of coordinating work. They are never commitments, or even 
suggestions of time schedules that outside users can rely on. 

My own feeling is that reliability is more important than getting something
out quickly. People who want the latest and greatest can always grab snap
shots and fiddle (and even help by reporting errors). 

I think Mike goes a bit far in saying it is "our fault". It is not a fault
to delay the release until it is in good shape, it is by far the best thing
to do. 

Again going back to GNAT, we often get ferocious criticism for not rushing
public versions out of the door more rapidly, but we just let it bounce
off. We know that the great majority of users of the public version of
GNAT appreciate being able to get a high quality Ada compiler for their
research work etc, and are happy to wait till something is in good shape.

It seems to me that the community of GCC users breaks into several groups.

1. Those who want to play with the absolutely latest version of the technology
and don't mind if it comes with some instability. They have access to the
snapshots.

2. Non-commercial users, who want something reasonably reliable, for
example for working on Free Software projects of their own. We do not do this
segment a favor by rushing out new versions before they are ready. They will
do fine using the previous reliable release, and working around problems.

3. Those who are using the technology for commercial purposes, and need and
rely on scheduled releases, reliable fixing of problems etc, and are willing
to pay for those services. For this group, companies like Redhat, ACT, etc
exist and compete in the market like any other commercial companies. We hope
they will contribute to the open development effort as well as benefit from
it, and for the most part that seems to work well.

4. Those who are using the technology for commercial purposes, and need and
rely on scheduled releases etc, but who are not willing to pay anything. To
such people we say "you get what you pay for", and we should be sure not to
let the loud shouting and grumbling that is presented in lieu of effort or
financial support affect us. In particular, we do not need to adjust our
priorities in response, and most importantly, we must avoid getting 
discouraged or depressed by what seems to be unjustified criticism.      

It seems to me that Mark Mitchell does a remarkable job of managing the
release and the procedures he follows serve the needs of audiences 1-3
just fine. Managing releases is a very difficult job under the best of
circumstances. Doing it when you are relying on volunteer help is really
difficult!

Robert

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Adam Megacz]

"Kris Warkentin" <kewarken@qnx.com> writes:
> Hey, my email got bounced.  He can swear at us but we can't swear at
> him.

So what happens when he swears at himself?

  - a

-- 
The web is dead; long live the Internet.
http://www.xwt.org/

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Maciej Z. Pindera]

Robert Dewar wrote:

>A general comment here is that having been in this business for 8 years now,
>the phenomenon of people expecting a lot for free and being angry when they
>don't get it, or of people complaining at volunteers for not working harder,
>will not go away.
>
>The important thing is not to get demoralized by such complaints, but just
>brush them off. There are lots of people who really appreciate the work, but
>are too busy doing useful stuff to say thank you. I do think that it is a 
>good idea if everyone on this list tries to be positive all the time and
>to be constructive in suggestions, and very sparing in criticism. In the
>volunteer world there are no sticks, and only limited carrots :-)
>
>Try and laugh at folks making complaints rather than get irritated. My
>theater story has been good in our theater group for lots of laughs over
>the years!
>
>Robert
>

Just a quick note to express my appreciation for the team's efforts.  I 
use gcc regularly on my Linux boxes for both C++ & Fortran codes.  Great 
work, great price.

>

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Joe Buck]

> > If you would have followed the mails a bit better,
> 
> Please don't whack the user.  It wasn't his fault, and it is natural
> for him to expect it, because _we set his expectation_.

The user is not being whacked because of his expectation (that gcc 3.1
would be out May 1).  He is being whacked, properly, for hurling vitriolic
abuse at people who are working as hard as they can for him, for free.

We no longer have a private development list, so it's not possible to
get developers working to get a release out on time without also telling
the users what date we are aiming for.  Given this situation, slips will
happen, and the alternative of simply not mentioning a date won't work
(since dates will have to be mentioned at least privately and they will
leak).

Mark, maybe next time you mention a tentative release date, more language
should be added warning people against incorporating the date in any of
their own plans, since schedule slips are not only possible but likely.

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[DJ Delorie]

The GCC project is run entirely by volunteers.  If you are not
satisfied with the progress of any aspect of the project, feel free to
step in and help.  The GPL specifically allows you to "do it yourself"
if that isn't sufficient.  Otherwise, feel free to contract with an
existing volunteer to work in your best interests in exchange for a
fee.  There are no other obligations on the part of the GCC
development team - to you, to us, to a schedule - none.

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[mike stump]

> To: "Klaus Berger" <klausberger@email.com>
> Cc: gcc@gnu.org
> From: Andreas Jaeger <aj@suse.de>
> Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 09:00:12 +0200

> If you would have followed the mails a bit better,

Please don't whack the user.  It wasn't his fault, and it is natural
for him to expect it, because _we set his expectation_.

> Btw. I do think that neither your tone nor your attitude are
> appropriate - and your previous contribution in GCC does not allow you
> to make such demands.

Please don't whack the user.  It is not his fault he expected it, it
is our fault.

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[mike stump]

> From: "Klaus Berger" <klausberger@email.com>
> To: gcc@gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 01:22:04 -0500

> please allow me to write exactly this lines to you. i know you are
> all doing a nice job on gcc 3.1 but i feel fooled by your gcc maintainer
> a lot of date shifts 14th april to 1st may then it was said to be
> released in the next days, last weekend mark mitchell said that he is
> doing the packages after weekend and now we have wednesday. either you
> are fooling us or you are doing this to get time to fix other shit.
> either you fucking hell release that damn gcc 3.1 that i am waiting
> for - for over a month now that i really like to have or if the work
> is to hard for you (like life of a maintainer beeing hard) then hand
> over the work to someone else who is capable to NOT pissoff their
> people.

And this is why the previous policy was the way it was, to avoid the
above type of situation.  It was generally felt that the user didn't
need the aggravation and we didn't need the pressure.  Remember, for
each one of them, there are 20 that have not spoken up.

RE: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Chip Cuntz]

As a casual user of your awesome product slips don't bother the least bit.
Maybe someday I'll make the leap from regular reader of this list and join
the elite coders who work on the GNU compiler.  Thanks for the effort and
screw Klaus Berger.  What planet is this person from any how?

Chip

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Marc Espie]

Compared to past slippages, I would say that the gcc 3.1 schedule
is a vast improvement indeed !

Kuddos to everyone, hoping it will be even better in the future.

RE: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Ben Woodhead]

Hello Everybody

I am not part of your developers list although I do read though it as much as 
possible.. I really have to say that people are funny.. I ran a project 
related to 3d graphics, and I always got messages saying stuff like you don't 
update the news often enough (2 time a day was not good), or what ever and I 
was always amazed that people not willing to help are still willing to 
bitch.. The one good thing about free software and such is that you don't 
have to be nice to the a**holes that say stuff like this.. HEHHEHEE.. I see 
what he means it would be nice for someone to actually put something on the 
news that says the release has slipped and we will post a new release date as 
soon as we know.. But that is not manditory, you can easily find this 
information in the mailing lists.. I am having a hard time typing, because I 
a laughing to much.. For everybody here, ready my last quote on the bottom of 
my message...

Later, Ben

> hello,
> 
> please allow me to write exactly this lines to you. i know you are
> all doing a nice job on gcc 3.1 but i feel fooled by your gcc maintainer
> a lot of date shifts 14th april to 1st may then it was said to be
> released in the next days, last weekend mark mitchell said that he is
> doing the packages after weekend and now we have wednesday. either you
> are fooling us or you are doing this to get time to fix other shit.
> either you fucking hell release that damn gcc 3.1 that i am waiting
> for - for over a month now that i really like to have or if the work
> is to hard for you (like life of a maintainer beeing hard) then hand
> over the work to someone else who is capable to NOT pissoff their
> people.


-- 
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
 simpler" - Albert Einstein

"Its Free, so if it breaks, you can keep all the peices.. "

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Robert Dewar]

A general comment here is that having been in this business for 8 years now,
the phenomenon of people expecting a lot for free and being angry when they
don't get it, or of people complaining at volunteers for not working harder,
will not go away.

The important thing is not to get demoralized by such complaints, but just
brush them off. There are lots of people who really appreciate the work, but
are too busy doing useful stuff to say thank you. I do think that it is a 
good idea if everyone on this list tries to be positive all the time and
to be constructive in suggestions, and very sparing in criticism. In the
volunteer world there are no sticks, and only limited carrots :-)

Try and laugh at folks making complaints rather than get irritated. My
theater story has been good in our theater group for lots of laughs over
the years!

Robert

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Kris Warkentin]

Hey, my email got bounced.  He can swear at us but we can't swear at him.
;-)

Trend SMEX Content Filter has detected sensitive content.

Place = Klaus Berger; gcc@gnu.org; ;
Sender = Kris Warkentin
Subject = Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke
Delivery Time = May 15, 2002 (Wednesday) 07:42:30
Policy = Language
Action on this mail = Quarantine message

Warning message from administrator:
This message meets BMC Software's email rejection policy referred to above.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kris Warkentin" <kewarken@qnx.com>
To: "Klaus Berger" <klausberger@email.com>; <gcc@gnu.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 7:40 AM
Subject: Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke


> You know what?  Someone walks up to me, hands me some nice, free stuff and
I
> slap them and say, "You said you were going to give it to me yesterday."
> Makes me a bit of a prick doesn't it?  Makes you a prick too.  You want to
> yell at people about software release dates?  Don't be a cheap fscker
> because there's lots of compiler vendors who will be happy to take your
> money and will listen to your complaints, ($50 per incident).  You want
> service?  Pay for it.  You want good quality free software?  It will be
> ready when it's ready.
>
> Kris
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Klaus Berger" <klausberger@email.com>
> To: <gcc@gnu.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 2:22 AM
> Subject: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke
>
>
> > hello,
> >
> > please allow me to write exactly this lines to you. i know you are
> > all doing a nice job on gcc 3.1 but i feel fooled by your gcc maintainer
> > a lot of date shifts 14th april to 1st may then it was said to be
> > released in the next days, last weekend mark mitchell said that he is
> > doing the packages after weekend and now we have wednesday. either you
> > are fooling us or you are doing this to get time to fix other s**t.
> > either you fscking he11 release that darn gcc 3.1 that i am waiting
> > for - for over a month now that i really like to have or if the work
> > is to hard for you (like life of a maintainer beeing hard) then hand
> > over the work to someone else who is capable to NOT pissoff their
> > people.
> >
> > --
> > _______________________________________________
> > Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Email.com
> > http://www.email.com/?sr=signup
> >
> >
>
>

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Kris Warkentin]

You know what?  Someone walks up to me, hands me some nice, free stuff and I
slap them and say, "You said you were going to give it to me yesterday."
Makes me a bit of a prick doesn't it?  Makes you a prick too.  You want to
yell at people about software release dates?  Don't be a cheap fucker
because there's lots of compiler vendors who will be happy to take your
money and will listen to your complaints, ($50 per incident).  You want
service?  Pay for it.  You want good quality free software?  It will be
ready when it's ready.

Kris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Klaus Berger" <klausberger@email.com>
To: <gcc@gnu.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 2:22 AM
Subject: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke


> hello,
>
> please allow me to write exactly this lines to you. i know you are
> all doing a nice job on gcc 3.1 but i feel fooled by your gcc maintainer
> a lot of date shifts 14th april to 1st may then it was said to be
> released in the next days, last weekend mark mitchell said that he is
> doing the packages after weekend and now we have wednesday. either you
> are fooling us or you are doing this to get time to fix other shit.
> either you fucking hell release that damn gcc 3.1 that i am waiting
> for - for over a month now that i really like to have or if the work
> is to hard for you (like life of a maintainer beeing hard) then hand
> over the work to someone else who is capable to NOT pissoff their
> people.
>
> --
> _______________________________________________
> Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Email.com
> http://www.email.com/?sr=signup
>
>

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Nathan Sidwell]

Allan Sandfeld Jensen wrote:

> You have a funny way of begging. But even if you really begged in your
> bleeding knees it wouldnt help, gcc 3.1 is released when it's ready. This is
> not a corporation where you release prematurely just for your boss not to
> lose face over some silly deadline.
Like the beer commercial (in .uk at any rate),
<accent=dutch>
  what are you doing? This software is not ready yet. 
  GNU. We only let you use it when it's ready.
</accent>

nathan

-- 
Dr Nathan Sidwell :: Computer Science Department :: Bristol University
           The voices in my head told me to say this
nathan@acm.org  http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~nathan/  nathan@cs.bris.ac.uk

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Allan Sandfeld Jensen]

On Wednesday 15 May 2002 08:22, Klaus Berger wrote:
> hello,
>
> please allow me to write exactly this lines to you. i know you are
> all doing a nice job on gcc 3.1 but i feel fooled by your gcc maintainer
> a lot of date shifts 14th april to 1st may then it was said to be
> released in the next days, last weekend mark mitchell said that he is
> doing the packages after weekend and now we have wednesday. either you
> are fooling us or you are doing this to get time to fix other shit.
> either you fucking hell release that damn gcc 3.1 that i am waiting
> for - for over a month now that i really like to have or if the work
> is to hard for you (like life of a maintainer beeing hard) then hand
> over the work to someone else who is capable to NOT pissoff their
> people.

You have a funny way of begging. But even if you really begged in your 
bleeding knees it wouldnt help, gcc 3.1 is released when it's ready. This is 
not a corporation where you release prematurely just for your boss not to 
lose face over some silly deadline.

Btw. iIf you really need a compiler why dont you use the prereleases or even 
gcc 2.95? They are both fine .


`Allan

PS. Why did I reply to this troll?

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Sven Lundblad]

Hi,

We are many how waits for gcc 3.1 but accurate predicting when a
software project has achieved its goal is hard and requires a lot of
planing work (and often fail any way). To be pissed on people that put a
lot of effort into gcc just because a release estimate is missed seams
very immature to me and I have a great admiration for the people making
this great compiler a reality.

Please keep up the great work and big thanks to all gcc contributors!

Regards,
Sven Lundblad

Klaus Berger wrote:
> 
> hello,
> 
> please allow me to write exactly this lines to you. i know you are
> all doing a nice job on gcc 3.1 but i feel fooled by your gcc maintainer
> a lot of date shifts 14th april to 1st may then it was said to be
> released in the next days, last weekend mark mitchell said that he is
> doing the packages after weekend and now we have wednesday. either you
> are fooling us or you are doing this to get time to fix other shit.
> either you fucking hell release that damn gcc 3.1 that i am waiting
> for - for over a month now that i really like to have or if the work
> is to hard for you (like life of a maintainer beeing hard) then hand
> over the work to someone else who is capable to NOT pissoff their
> people.
> 
> --
> _______________________________________________
> Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Email.com
> http://www.email.com/?sr=signup

-- 
---
Sven Lundblad, OSE Systems

Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Andreas Jaeger]

"Klaus Berger" <klausberger@email.com> writes:

> hello,
>
> please allow me to write exactly this lines to you. i know you are
> all doing a nice job on gcc 3.1 but i feel fooled by your gcc maintainer
> a lot of date shifts 14th april to 1st may then it was said to be
> released in the next days, last weekend mark mitchell said that he is
> doing the packages after weekend and now we have wednesday. either you
> are fooling us or you are doing this to get time to fix other shit.
> either you fucking hell release that damn gcc 3.1 that i am waiting
> for - for over a month now that i really like to have or if the work
> is to hard for you (like life of a maintainer beeing hard) then hand
> over the work to someone else who is capable to NOT pissoff their
> people.

If you would have followed the mails a bit better, you would be aware
of the reasons why it took longer to release GCC 3.1: We fixed a
number of serious regression and it's more important to fix bugs
instead of beeing on time.  I fully support Mark Mitchell in these
decisions and like to say that he has not pissed of the people working
on GCC (at least not me ;-).

Btw. I do think that neither your tone nor your attitude are
appropriate - and your previous contribution in GCC does not allow you
to make such demands.  If you're so eager to work with GCC 3.1, you
could have used a prerelease and helped with testing and fixing the
bugs.

Andreas
-- 
 Andreas Jaeger
  SuSE Labs aj@suse.de
   private aj@arthur.inka.de
    http://www.suse.de/~aj

your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke

[Klaus Berger]

hello,

please allow me to write exactly this lines to you. i know you are
all doing a nice job on gcc 3.1 but i feel fooled by your gcc maintainer
a lot of date shifts 14th april to 1st may then it was said to be
released in the next days, last weekend mark mitchell said that he is
doing the packages after weekend and now we have wednesday. either you
are fooling us or you are doing this to get time to fix other shit.
either you fucking hell release that damn gcc 3.1 that i am waiting
for - for over a month now that i really like to have or if the work
is to hard for you (like life of a maintainer beeing hard) then hand
over the work to someone else who is capable to NOT pissoff their
people.

-- 
_______________________________________________
Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Email.com
http://www.email.com/?sr=signup