Reality check

[Hiji]

> Additionally, you might want to read this part of
> the LICENSE file again:
> 
> "This program is distributed in the hope that it
> will be useful, but
> WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
> warranty of
> MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
>  See the GNU
> Lesser General Public License for more details."

Of course I'm familiar with that.  I'm not saying
anything at all about Wine's warranty.  What I am
talking about is about the general sense of
responsibility.  Money or not.  Fixing what you broke
is the right thing to do -- regardless of the
disclaimer.

And yet, presenting that disclaimer almost defeats the
argument to pay for bug fixing; again, I could
theoretically pay for development to fix a bug which
could end up broken again in 3 months.


> Nobody magically made it so that you *have* to
> upgrade.
Magic?  No.  Progress?  Yes, I have to because of
this.  What do I mean?  I have been using
wine-20041201 until I upgraded to opensuse 10.0; the
compile won't succeed now.  Otherwise, I would have
stuck with that old version.

Now, take a different look on things and try to recall
how often people tell users, "Why are you on such an
old version of Wine?  You should be using a newer
version."


>  If you made it 
> work before, then it's possible to make it work
> again, isn't it?  If you 
> forgot what combination of software worked, is that
> really my problem?
I think you're steering far away from the point I was
making about responsibility. ;)  Far FAAAR away.  I
don't screw around with DLL overrides (perhaps just
for experimenting), and I don't even use wine-tools. 
If something breaks, it's definately not because I
can't remember a combination of hacks I did - simply
because, I didn't do this.


> Now if somebody changes something in an attempt to
> improve things, and 
> you want their improvements, and you want your old
> applications to work, 
> then you want something from them, don't you?
In the context of this example and referring to what
I'm getting at, you get one improvement, but in
return, something else gets broken.  That just doesn't
seem right.  It's like the little kid who makes
breakfast for mom & dad, but in the process, makes a
mess of the kitchen (that mom & dad end up having to
clean up anyways).

And really, in the grand scheme of things, I'm not
writing all of this because of what *I* want for
myself.  I'm writing this because I really DO care
about Wine, I'm a big supporter of it, and I want it
to succeed ...  I'm hoping that this will cause some
light bulbs to turn on and bring some realizations to
light.

You guys are probably sitting on the most valuable API
of this era, and it drives ABSOLUTELY nutz that many
people here don't even realize this.  And when people
pop out these disclaimers as an excuse for not fixing
things, it adds salt to the wounds.  If I could get in
there to code, I would do so, but I can't.  And, all I
can do from this corner of the ring is cheer on Wine
and bring to the table non-technical issues which
clearly get in the way of its progression.

Peace & Love for Wine!! :)
Hiji




	
		
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