[Fwd: Bug Tracking Software Link]

[J. Paul Reed]

On 18 Aug 2003 at 13:14:16, Christopher Hicks arranged the bits on my disk to say:

> On Mon, 18 Aug 2003, J. Paul Reed wrote:
> 
> > Why should the Bugzilla project help them make sales, period (immaterial
> > of whether or not they put a link to Bugzilla on their page)?
> 
> Whatever dolts decide to PAY for bug tracking software would probably
> have anyway.  

Exactly. So why do we need to put links to commercial competitors' sites?

> In terms of net sales for "them" and net bugzilla installations for "us"
> it's difficult for me to imagine we're going to end up on the losing
> side.  

That's not really the point of the argument at all; the point of the
argument is that an open source project shouldn't be wasting bandwidth and
page real-estate providing links to competitors and (more philosophically),
open source projects shouldn't be promoting closed-source software.

> > That's like Linux.com "featuring" links to microsoft.com or sco.com for
> > "other operating system technology you might be interested in."
> 
> The world would be a better place if more of this sort of thing went on.  
> It would help people find the right alternative for them and not get stuck 
> on "the only product that I've ever heard of".  

If people looking for a bug-tracking solution are too stupid to put "bug
tracking" into Google (where bmo is the fourth link), then I don't *want*
them using Bugzilla; these are the same types of people that waste our time
asking questions meant for the newsgroup on developers@ that are answered
thirty times in the manual anyway (or, alternatively, who get on
developers@ and whine that we should implement *their* feature, but balk at
having to pay a contractor to do it for them).

Putting a link to commercial competitors' sites is not going to fix their
stupidity.

> A number of open source projects do this sort of thing.  I tried to dig
> up an example.

And... you... failed to find one? Or what?

> Fair competition is based on the consumer having complete knowledge.  
> Doing things that encourage fair competition is good.  Period.

Tell that to the federal government; they can't seem to get most
corporations these days to play by those rules. As it is, commercial
software companies have done more to stifle fair competition than to
promote it; so excuse me if I don't shed a tear because someone at
bugzilla.org can't find any information about bug tracking products they
can pay for that aren't ours.

I don't want to get into a whole "thing" with everyone about this; I spoke
my piece.

Later,
Paul
------------------------------------------------------------------------
J. Paul Reed -- 0xDF8708F8 || preed at sigkill.com || web.sigkill.com/preed
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