On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 7:32 PM, Helma Dik <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I would say, or rather plead with members of this group, that work-in-progress into which no community, only a single person's, resources were poured, and about which we don't know where they could/would have gone or any other backstory, should not be held up to the same level of opprobrium in a public forum as should projects presented as finished, projects maintaining a de facto monopoly, projects taking private and public funding, and projects charging their users. In other words, let's please reserve the harsh criticism for the Broadway musicals, not the previews or the first read-through.
I did not make the initial comparison and I was trying very hard
indeed to be as fair-minded as possible while making a number of
points that I still think absolutely needed to be said. Looking back
on what I wrote, the only thing that I think might be considered
ungenerous was my scepticism about the promise that Andromeda would
one day be open-sourced. It is axiomatic in the open-source world
that the release of a closed binary with a vague promise of future
source should be treated not with mere indifference but as a
deliberate attempt to sabotage and undermine free software
development. This may seem churlish and ungrateful, but history has
shown that this is a real danger. So if my comment seemed harsh, I
regret the way I phrased it, but that is where I was coming from. As
to opprobrium and harsh reviews, I think I came well short of the
sneering comment at the top of the Andromeda website: "Are you
aggravated with the 1996-vintage Thesaurus Linguae Graecae search
engine that never seems to do what you tell it to? "
With best wishes,
Peter
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