I "like" Mandriva's attitude (Fwd: Re: well-known user folders, a proposal)

[Kevin Krammer]

On Friday 23 February 2007 09:03, Guillaume Laurent wrote:
> On Friday 23 February 2007 00:49, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > Right, I often forget that I am too idealistic and that businesses will
> > show no interest in quality as long as the customers are paying and
> > somebody else is doing the support for free.
>
> They are interested in quality, they also have deadlines and limited
> resources. It's not lazyness, just pragmatism.

I know, I have been working in the software industry long enough, but usually 
most deadlines kill the quality. It's a trade off.

As I was trying to say, its their decision, but I don't have to like it, do I?

If they rather spend money on cleaning up the mess than on not making it 
happen, their choice, but don't expect me to help in the cleaning up.

> > P.S: we should ask the kde-promo people to compose a list of KDE
> > developer mailinglists which we can then at aKademy handout to all KDE
> > contributors currently employed at distributions so that they can then
> > post them at strategic positions in their offices.
>
> A mailing-list is the worst possible tech-support outlet, and should only
> be used as a last resort. You want online manuals here.

I have a novel idea (and should get a patent right away): they could hire a 
KDE developer. He or she would not only likely know how it is done, he or she 
would most likely know who the expert for a given problem is and he or she 
might even be able to find a solution themselves.

Actually, finding out that the file dialog speedbar can be customized globally 
is something every common user can tell you, because that is what KDE is 
asking you if you add items the the speedbar.

But again, I absolutely agree that it is a distributor's choice to spend time 
and money on developing a patch for something they could have trivially 
achieved through configuration and afterwards spend even more time and money 
on fixing all the unwanted side effects.

And I just realize that I have been tremendously stupid again. I used to be 
stupid to to support for Microsoft ("fixing" computing problems of friends 
and relatives) and I am, again *sigh*, stupid for doing the same for 
different companies which, just like Microsoft, are only in for the money and 
do not care to cooperate.

I hate it when reality gets too close.

Cheers,
Kevin
-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring