Wouter van Ooijen wrote:
>> Yeah, I agree that open source is way overrated.  [...]
>> Open source software is the most expensive kind.
>
> Come on Olin, you should know that blanket statements are seldom true

I didn't mean to imply that open software is always a bad thing, not that
the quality is worse or better than closed software.  It's just that I hear
a lot of knee jerk "it's closed software therefore I don't like it"
attitudes, apparently without any consideration of all the trouble it would
take to actually do something with the source code.  While I'm probably
capable of getting into most software and spending effort on adding some
feature or fixing some bug, the point is I don't want to.  I also think a
large majority of people who are always on about open software don't
actually ever touch the code.

There is also the effect that openess gives the authors an exuse for not
implementing something.

A somewhat relevant example is when I started using Eagle.  A few times I
called Cadsoft tech support on how to do something specific, and sometimes
was told "Eagle doesn't do that, but you could write a ULP to do that".  Yes
I probably could, but the point is I didn't want to.  I wanted to get my
project done without being a CAD system programmer.  I was also new to
Eagle, and figuring out how ULPs work, finding all the documentation,
figuring out the development environment, etc, sounded like a lot of hassle.
I have meanwhile dug into that, and like most things it's not so bad once
you get into it and set up, and I've written a few (pretty cool, I think)
ULPs since then.  I like that Eagle has the ULP capability, but it pisses me
off how Cadsoft allows that to be an excuse for not implementing some
generally useful things themselves.

I think most people underestimate the work in setting up a development
environment, getting all the files in the right place, the right tools, and
getting that first build to work just to get what there is now.  Then you
still have to dig thru the source code and hope it's documented better than
99% of all the source code out there so that you can figure out how it
works.

I'm not against open source, I'd just like to see the costs included
whenever its benefits are touted.


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