On 6/26/07, Tom Horsley <tom.horsley@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:03:16 -0700 "Lonni J Friedman" <netllama@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Open source projects are full of long standing bugs which haven't been > fixed. Just because code is open does not mean that a bug is going to > get fixed faster unless you are the one who is capable of fixing it. In my experience just because you are paying for support doesn't mean it is gonna get fixed either (unless the one paying is Microsoft or Sony and is providing the lion's share of revenue - bugs they pay to get fixed probably do get fixed, or at least obscured :-).
Sure, I never implied that paying for support means that bugs get fixed (or even fixed faster). However the claim that if its open source, its going to get fixed (or fixed faster) also doesn't hold up. There are many great reasons to use open source software, however getting bugs fixed faster is really not one of them unless you're the one doing the fixing.
For the sort of thing open source can provide even without actually "fixing" a bug myself, see: http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley/easy-linux.html
Of course, those are many great examples of the benefits of open source. It certainly doesn't change the fact that open source bugs don't necessarily get fixed any faster than closed source bugs. The point here is that someone claimed that going with the open source intel drivers means that someone would get better support. That claim is silly because 'support' is a rather vague concept, and my idea of support likely differs from someone else's.
