Todd wrote:

Because it was a reasonable exchange until:

"Welcome to open-source, kiddo"

And from this point on you acted like a condescending dickhead.

Well, chum (and you may take that in any sense you wish, including in particular the shark kind), the truth is that I have seldom seen such a ripe candidate for condescension. Whining about version numbers below 1.0? Yeah, indeed, that's indeed part of the proprietary-software addict's mindset, along with complaining that other people's software that you don't choose to use is clearly unacceptable because, unlike the polished examples of perfection you favour, it has bug reports (eek!), doesn't have the right lipgloss applied to it by the Church of Steve, isn't vetted by the Human Interface Guidelines fashion police, and hasn't been marketed to you with adequate numbers of testimonials.

Like OS X should be configured with mixed UFS and HFS files systems.

Clue: I've been using mixed UFS/HFS+ systems since the early OS X Server betas. It's really simple: Following the pattern with the rest of Unix, if you tell the system to do something really stupid that will discard a file extent, it will gladly comply. As the old joke goes: "So Don't Do That, Then."

You claim that you can't understand what "doing something really stupid" means in this context unless I can show you a manpage. My first reaction is incredulity: I'm supposed to believe you're a MacOS developer who honestly doesn't understand basic file semantics? My second reaction is pity: You honestly think manpages are tutorial materials?

But then I realise that "honestly" is more likely not in this picture at all, and remember your attempt to hustle everyone with that "all software is proprietary" shuck and jive. I.e., the natural inferences is that you're trying to invent an issue about manpages as tutorials because you think nobody's bright enough to spot a whopper like that.

Now, you happen to prefer your systems built 100% on the crappier of those two filesystems just so more of your scissors are rounded and your little bike has training wheels. Good for you. But telling those of us who do know the basics of file semantics that we're "irresponsible" is both pathetic and fscking rude. And I don't fscking care what your software church preaches to you.

Or that code should be trusted to beta quality version control systems.

And this reminds me of one of the subtler reasons why many open-source projects deliberately keep their version numbers pre-1.0 for extended periods of time: It reduces the idiot quotient among the userbase, by driving away those who won't use the code without an adequate marketing dance.

I'll bet even you can find the Subversion Project's criteria for a 1.0 release, by the way. It's on the front page of their Web site. And the list of nine release-critical bugs is two links from there. See if you can find that, too.

Or not. Just to be crystal-clear on this point: I don't give a tinker's damn what software you use and don't use, and would merely prefer that you work out your personal problems far from me. That's highly unlikely to ever change, but don't call me; I'll call you.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com