🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MPG.16819a496b656dbd98988f@news.cyburban.com>, Alberich wrote:
> So, I hit a nerve, huh? My accurate assessments of the deficiences of 
> Winboard are pretty on the nose, I'm sorry to say.

No, that wasn't the nerve you hit.  The nerve you hit was one that
gets raw for a lot of free, open source software authors -- the one
that aches when people who get things for free just keep demanding
more and more, and are not even polite about it.

In writing free software, I'm giving you something at no charge that
you are free to use if you like, and free to contribute to and improve
if you see things that need improvement.  But your attitude is to sit
back and harshly criticize the software for lacking some things you
want and for not being as polished as a commercial product.  You speak
condescendingly, and order me (all your "suggestions" were in the
imperative) to do things.  You take the position of a dissatisfied
customer who has paid money for a product and threatens to take his
business elsewhere unless the product is improved in the next release.

That's not how it works with free software.  Some people might write
it for fame and glory and be constantly striving to get as many users
as possible and to be better than any of the competing products.  But
most of us write free software to "scratch an itch" -- we write it
because we want it to do something for ourselves, or for fun.  Then we
give it away so that others can use it, or improve it, to scratch
their itch.  Attempting to light a fire under someone like me only
gets me grouchy, because I don't like sitting on top of fires.

I personally am pretty tired of xboard/WinBoard after having been
working on them on and off for 10 years.  For the last couple of years
I've done very little on them.  I don't play chess myself anymore, nor
am I interested in writing chess engines or collecting them and
matching them against each other, so I no longer have an itch to
scratch.  Actually, working at my regular job is much more fun.  But
since there is a large user base including many nonprogrammers, and
I'm a nice guy, I've continued to put in a small amount of effort.
Version 4.2.4 is the first release in 10 months, and is a bugfix-only
release, precisely because I'm no longer excited about this project.

I guess you think your message was a sort of contribution -- you say
you're trying to help.  Well, it's helpful to know what users want.
It's more pleasant when they can say what they want with some
politeness and respect.  Also, in this case, all but one of the items
you suggested have been suggested many times before, and I'm well
aware that adding them would be an improvement.  None of them can be
done with "a few lines of code" -- if I'm mistaken about that, please
demonstrate by writing those lines of code and contributing them.  The
one new suggestion was having multiple PGN files with index windows
open at once.  The fact that no one else suggested that before may
give you a hint that others don't see it as being such an important
feature as you seem to.  I'll certainly record it on the wishlist,
though, where it will sit with the couple hundred other items people
have asked for until someone gets itchy enough to code it up and
contribute it.

-- 
Tim Mann  usenet@tim-mann.org  http://www.tim-mann.org/