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* your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke
@ 2002-05-15  0:11 Klaus Berger
  2002-05-15  0:35 ` Andreas Jaeger
                   ` (7 more replies)
  0 siblings, 8 replies; 24+ messages in thread
From: Klaus Berger @ 2002-05-15  0:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: gcc

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.

-- 
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 24+ messages in thread
* Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke
@ 2002-05-15  5:16 Robert Dewar
  2002-05-15  8:06 ` Daniel Berlin
  2002-05-15  9:06 ` DJ Delorie
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 24+ messages in thread
From: Robert Dewar @ 2002-05-15  5:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: gcc, klausberger

> 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 :-)

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 24+ messages in thread
* Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke
@ 2002-05-15  6:21 Robert Dewar
  2002-05-15 11:24 ` Maciej Z. Pindera
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 24+ messages in thread
From: Robert Dewar @ 2002-05-15  6:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: gcc, kewarken, klausberger

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

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 24+ messages in thread
* RE: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke
@ 2002-05-15  6:56 Ben Woodhead
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 24+ messages in thread
From: Ben Woodhead @ 2002-05-15  6:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: gcc

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.. "

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 24+ messages in thread
* Re: your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke
@ 2002-05-16  4:54 Robert Dewar
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 24+ messages in thread
From: Robert Dewar @ 2002-05-16  4:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: aj, mrs; +Cc: gcc

> 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

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 24+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2002-05-17 20:40 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 24+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2002-05-15  0:11 your gcc 3.1 release date is a joke Klaus Berger
2002-05-15  0:35 ` Andreas Jaeger
2002-05-15  8:40   ` mike stump
2002-05-15 10:51     ` Joe Buck
2002-05-15  0:46 ` Sven Lundblad
2002-05-15  1:09 ` Allan Sandfeld Jensen
2002-05-15  4:07   ` Nathan Sidwell
2002-05-15  5:42 ` Kris Warkentin
2002-05-15  5:44   ` Kris Warkentin
2002-05-15 16:08     ` Adam Megacz
2002-05-15 16:25       ` RE ignoranc: was " Bobby McNulty Junior
2002-05-15  7:46 ` Marc Espie
2002-05-15  7:49 ` Chip Cuntz
2002-05-15  8:39 ` mike stump
2002-05-15  9:10 ` DJ Delorie
2002-05-15  5:16 Robert Dewar
2002-05-15  8:06 ` Daniel Berlin
2002-05-15 17:49   ` Aaron Lehmann
2002-05-17 14:40   ` Tim Hollebeek
2002-05-15  9:06 ` DJ Delorie
2002-05-15  6:21 Robert Dewar
2002-05-15 11:24 ` Maciej Z. Pindera
2002-05-15  6:56 Ben Woodhead
2002-05-16  4:54 Robert Dewar

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