Re: [Openfoam-extend-general] Development process of OpenFOAM-1.5-dev

[Rostislav S. <ros...@gm...>]

Hi together

2009/8/8 Håkan Nilsson <ha...@ch...>:
> It is in fact quite easy to install the dev-version. You just
[..]
> Most slightly experienced OpenFOAM users realize this and [that]
[..]
> don't be so upset about some minor mistakes, and instead see how
> much you get for free from lots of people who didn't get anything back
> from you yet.

I have a friend of mine he is a brilliant mechanical engineer with
unfortunately no idea what is a 'swap partition', 'code repository' or
'preprocessor directive'. Your doctor does not blame you for knowing
how to say knee in Latin. So don't blame a mechanical engineer for a
lack of software engineering skills. Frankly, if you go to doctor you
get a service worth of thousands of Euro sometimes, although you payed
just a fraction of it. And if the doc makes a mistake you're about to
... well not a word about being thankful for how much you got for
free.

I can tell you, that friend of mine has spent last 6 month on learning
'linux and all the stuff around', on learning something he is not
interested in! I repeat: He is a mechanical not software engineer. And
if I track back his problems: Most of the time waste is caused by -
from your point of view - minor mistakes.

Would _you_ be thankful for that?

> Note that you are dealing with a development line, meaning that some
> revisions might give you error messages while compling.

??? Do you realize implications of your statement? If anyone breaks it
no one else can compile it! Isn't it _the_ emergency situation to be
avoided at any cost?!?

> I'm sure that you can set up a support contract with some
> developer to keep all the README files typo-error-free, but for most
> developers it is in fact the code itself that has the highest priority.

Hey, hey, hold on! What do you think how many people out-there in the
wild have enough software engineering know-how and linux skills for
this job. Besides, linux is still too exotic and difficult even for
more than a 90% of IT guys (based on ongoing everyday experience) And
what do you think how much do you have to pay to a such guy? And what
do you think who would be interested in such a work if there is plenty
of more interesting jobs at hand?

[..]
> see how much you get for free from lots of people who didn't get anything back
> from you yet.

How can you claim that? Aren't you using *that* linux where everyone
works for free? And what would you say about people which are never
gonna contribute to your project? People working on KDE, Gnome,
Kernel, GCC, Firefox, Ubuntu, Debian, Amarok, Vim, Emacs etc.? And
what about all the people busy with introducing linux and especially
the OpenFOAM to the others? You think it's a 2 minutes work with no
impact on you?

Ok, next time I'll be a bit more constructive & productive

Bost