Subject: Re: Apples and Oranges

From: "Jonathan E. D. Richmond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 14:08:51 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

AH... But PINE is so much better than commercial products like Eudora!
Elegantly designed. highly functional and flexible! I would be happy to
pay for it -- in fact, I do pay for it in a way because my School's system
won't run UNIX PINE (which is available in other parts of Harvard which
won't, however, allow us accounts) and I pay to use an ISP in Texas, which
is the nearest one I could find that does IMAP!

The point is that because PINE is such a high quality product and has a
huge user base -- including many computer novice types (eg.
Humanistically-inclined freshmen using email for the first time) that a
little restraint is in order over the number of updates to allow more time
for bug-checking.

On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, Jan Kalin wrote:

> Jan Kalin <[email-masked]>
> 10/09/98 08:43 AM GMT
> 
> To:       Pine Discussion Forum <[email-masked]>
> 
> cc:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi!
> 
> On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, Ed Greshko wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've just been made aware that QuarkExpress is actually destop publishing
> > software.  So, it would appear, that its comparison with pine was
> irrelevant
> > to the discussion.
> 
> I'm not sure about that. The number of bugs in a new release *is*
> relevant. But the problem lies in comparing two completely different
> models of development.
> 
> QE is commercial software (http://www.quark.com/), priced at around $700 ,
> i.e., someone is making money out of your copy, Pine is freeware,
> supported and developed by enthusiasts who are doing it for free! It is
> *this* difference that makes the comparison irrelevant, like comparing
> Microsoft Windows (incidentally, do you really trust a company named after
> its' owner's private parts? sorry, couldn't resist }:-) and Linux.
> 
> What I'm trying to say is that for your e-mail user agent you can use
> commercial software (not QE, obviously, but Eudora and other similar
> products), where you pay for the product, expect it to be bug-free (VERY
> wishful thinking), and have little or no influence on the features in the
> next release.
> 
> On the other hand you can use something like Pine, which is free, in which
> you do expect an occasional bug to crop up, but where YOU can fix the bug
> and add new features, if you wish and have the know-how to do so. And even
> if you cannot do it, there is always someone else in the crowd of many
> thousands of users and the number of "official" developpers who can and
> *will* listen to your complaints.
> 
> Incidentally, has anyone heard of any commercial software that has had 5
> bug-fix releases and one patch in just over two months? Now that's rapid
> response to bug reports! One of the complaints in this thread was about
> too many releases in too short a time. I just wish I could say the same
> for the M$ Windows. The solution to the too-many-releases is simple: Just
> say no!
> 
> Nobody's forcing anyone to use newer versions. Pine 3.96 was around for
> about a year and a half and it worked fine. When 4.00 came out I
> downloaded and compiled it right away because of new features, *expecting*
> to maybe have some problems (which I didn't have) but also *knowing* that
> whatever they would be, they would get fixed quickly.
> 
> Cheers,
> Jan
> 
> --
>  Jan Kalin (male, preferred languages: Slovene, English)
>  <A HREF="http://www.zag.si/~jank/"> contact information </A>
> 
> 
> 
> 

-----

Jonathan E. D. Richmond                               (617) 864-6394
Fellow                                                (617) 496-3194
Taubman Center for State and Local Government    FAX: (617) 496-1722
Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138

e-mail: [email-masked] or [email-masked]
WWW: http://the-tech.mit.edu/~richmond/

---

From: David Dyck <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 11:28:14 -0700

On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, Jonathan E. D. Richmond wrote:

> ... that a little restraint is in order over the number of updates to
> allow more time for bug-checking.

But shouldn't the restraint be on the system administrators
that are installing the latest versions, (until they have
checked out the features, or waited for other pioniers to
test them out)

---

From: Bobby Ezell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 11:39:36 -0700 (PDT)

> checked out the features, or waited for other pioniers to

Agreed - especially since the hardest part of any released software is
testing it under all the circumstances and with all the oddities out
there. Sometimes calling it "beta" just doesn't cut it as most of us will
really avoid it then. Overall, if a sysadmin finds a problem in their test
criteria it should not be handed over to end-user use (or the sysadmin
needs to expand their testing).

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