"Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3005169.sPqFJmMTRG@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> __/ [ Kier ] on Friday 22 December 2006 08:36 \__
>
>> Though I would imagine (not having done any developing myself) that this
>> is not the case for all types of app. And of course, Linux has users wjho
>> by and large are willing and able to either contribute useful features or
>> willing to ask for them. After all, if a dev chucks in everything he
>> thinks a user might want, he could end up with something unweildy and
>> overblown. Concentrating on the essentials first seems to be a better
>> method.
>
> /Au contraire/. The itch-scratch phenomenon is a FOSS thing. In fact,
> wishlist items as bug reports (e.g. Bugzilla) are precisely why everyone
> gets what they want. Commercial software, on the other hand, often makes
> choices quite arrogantly, on 'behalf of' the userbase.
Actually, it's not uncommon for FOSS developers to "arrogantly" choose
not to implement a certain feature, either because it's a stupid feature
(though they don't actually come out and say this), or because it's "too
much work", etc.
Consider the Eclipse IDE, for example. You can ask Eclipse to print out
the source code, but it won't include line numbers. People have been asking
for this feature for a very long time. I know it's at least one year, but it
may in fact be several years. People have even submitted patches to the
source code to add this functionality. But the Eclipse team, for whatever
reason, keep procrastinating merging the code in. They said they'd do it in
version 2.0. We're now at version 3.3, and it still hasn't been added yet.
- Oliver
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