jim wrote:

> Things like simply plugging into a network and being able to browse XP
> folders on a peer to peer XP network (that means no server and no
> authentication needed) that are not password protected. Still don't have an
> answer to that one....

As far as I can recall Microsoft by default set XP to require
authentication, and there been quite many sites covering this thing, how
to change settings for samba on the Linux box and how to adjust the
microsoft XP register to allow proper authenticationless connection as
it was for microsoft 98.


> While I was testing some software in a Linux environment, I came across an
> area in which it would not work as advertised by the authors. I raised some
> polite concern (really...I was polite) about the problem in a user forum
> specific to this software, only to be told politely to rtfm.
> This time I was politely informed where I could reach the authors of the
> software. I went there and we went through the whole rtfm, re-rtfm loop
> another 2 or three times until they finally asked to see my data. I sent
> them my data files.

You usually get an answer to read the manual if you don't provide enough
information about your problem, it's kind of like calling your car
repair man and tell him, "my car don't start, what is wrong?", there is
a quite long list of problems that can cause the car to not start and
it's impossible to give a 100% sure answer.
It's far better if you provide too much information, telling
distribution, version of kernel, glibc, gcc, the software that you are
using and so on...


> In about an hour, they confirmed that there was a problem. Great! Now
> they'll jump right on it - because everyone wants their code to work like
> they say it will, right?
> Well, not really. I offered to help where I could (sacrificing a goat,
> providing beer or money) but was told that the only help needed was to fix
> the code. Unfortunately for me, I don't know C coding - so I am SOL.

As I don't know which program you been trying, but i wouldn't be
surprised if they code on their spare time, after they been at work for
8h, shopping food, cooking, cleaning and so on and they most likely have
a list of things that they will be working at, with the feature most
required on the top...


> Small businesses (which are 90+% of all businesses) are called "small
> businesses" because they are small. This generally means no in-house
> programmers. So, small businesses are at the mercy of the coders that
> provide the software that they run on.

you can always buy a distribution with support, then the distribution
will be making patches if the developers aren't fixing the bug. I would
say this works a lot better than using say something microsoft does, as
you in those cases has to wait at least to the next SP is released in
six months time and that only if microsoft would think the bug is big
enough to be fixed.


> In this instance, I am at the mercy of these coders.

You will be in the mercy of coders even if you run proprietary programs
too, and even if you knew C/C++/C#/Basic/... you won't be able to fix
the bug yourself when you get to know that your bug won't be fixed with
in the following 18 months.


> This is why FOSS just doesn't work for the majority of businesses (which are
> small businesses).

Seems to work for quite many small businesses, but of course it depends
on what you are working on, if you are a company making annoying flash
advertisements, then it may be better to use OSX with expensive software
instead of Linux, running a proper file server then there ain't any
question which is better to use.



--

//Aho