On 03/18/2018 11:43 PM, Norm wrote:
> 
> We don't want to be treated special. We don't want to give back. This is the *entire* point.
> 

An attitude like that and there's any wonder it didn't work out? Sheesh.

This is the thing about OSS: The business willing to give back (and there are many such businesses) are the ones that reap benefits. The companies that wilfully cling to zero-sum bullshit are on their own, by their own choice, and open themselves to allowing their competitors to take the advantage for themselves. That is the way of the world, that is the way of reality.

D can't be held responsible for self-defeating zero-sum, "us vs them" mentalities. Sheesh.

On 03/18/2018 11:28 PM, Manu wrote:
> 
> I know these feels so well.
> People take their one experience, and that's the truth on the matter.
> The sad part is, it's actually a massive missed opportunity! If these
> colleagues posted here, and instead were greeted by recognition of
> their issue, and provided a satisfactory work-around, or even a prompt
> fix, they would have taken a COMPLETELY different message away from
> their interaction; it would be "this D comunity is so awesome, I can
> have confidence that our issues will be handled in a personalised
> way!", and there's very strong value in that for a business...
> 

Well *of course* they would love any group that does custom work for them for free! ;)

But I think, therein lies one of the big shortcomings we have in promoting D:

Around here, we complain and whine and...erm...b***h (don't need another of Walter's secret PC-enforment emails) about "this is a volunteer project, we're not getting paid for this, blah blah blah"...

*AND YET*: We don't have NO crystal clear, obvious way for people to actually say "I need this, SO HERE, TAKE MY MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR IT!!!" (Sure, we know that Walter's been open to stuff like that, but do prospective D users know that?)

That's what we need. Solves everyone's problems. Improves D. Gets us around the "not backed by a company" problems. Brings businesses into D instead of turning them away at the gates. I mean, shoot: *We* want users, we want money, we want to get paid to work on/with D. *They* have money and want things done. Let's get together, right?!! Everybody happy!

On Thursday, March 22, 2018 21:25:11 Nick Sabalausky  via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 03/18/2018 11:43 PM, Norm wrote:
> > We don't want to be treated special. We don't want to give back. This is the *entire* point.
>
> An attitude like that and there's any wonder it didn't work out? Sheesh.
>
> This is the thing about OSS: The business willing to give back (and there are many such businesses) are the ones that reap benefits. The companies that wilfully cling to zero-sum bullshit are on their own, by their own choice, and open themselves to allowing their competitors to take the advantage for themselves. That is the way of the world, that is the way of reality.
>
> D can't be held responsible for self-defeating zero-sum, "us vs them" mentalities. Sheesh.

While I do think that there's a lot to be said for companies who are willing to use open source and give back to the community in the process, there are plenty of people (and not just companies) who just want a tool to get things done. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. Yes, everyone is better off when companies are willing to give back, but that doesn't work for everyone, and honestly, there are some places where I've worked where I wouldn't want them trying to give back, because they wouldn't be giving back anything of value and/or it would be of poor quality. But regardless of the quality of code involved, your average company is not going to do much in terms of contributing to open source, even if ultimately, we're all better off if folks in general contribute back from time to time.

And I think that it's quite safe to say that regardless of what folks are giving back or not giving back, we'd all be better off if D were in a place that the average user could use it without running into serious problems, and we wouldn't have companies saying that they couldn't use D because of bugs or whatnot. I think that we're in a _much_ better place with regards to that than we once were and that the situation continues to improve, but clearly, some of the issues that we still have are showstoppers for some folks. We're never going to please everyone, but we do want D to be solid and not _require_ that the average D user give back even if we'd very much like for folks to give back where they can.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 03/22/2018 09:44 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Thursday, March 22, 2018 21:25:11 Nick Sabalausky  via Digitalmars-d
> wrote:
>> On 03/18/2018 11:43 PM, Norm wrote:
>>> We don't want to be treated special. We don't want to give back. This is
>>> the *entire* point.
>>
>> An attitude like that and there's any wonder it didn't work out? Sheesh.
>>
>> This is the thing about OSS: The business willing to give back (and
>> there are many such businesses) are the ones that reap benefits. The
>> companies that wilfully cling to zero-sum bullshit are on their own, by
>> their own choice, and open themselves to allowing their competitors to
>> take the advantage for themselves. That is the way of the world, that is
>> the way of reality.
>>
>> D can't be held responsible for self-defeating zero-sum, "us vs them"
>> mentalities. Sheesh.
> 
> While I do think that there's a lot to be said for companies who are willing
> to use open source and give back to the community in the process, there are
> plenty of people (and not just companies) who just want a tool to get things
> done. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. 

I agree. The problem is with saying "I want X, and I'm not willing to offer anything for it." And then wondering why it doesn't work out.

On 03/22/2018 09:43 PM, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> On 03/18/2018 11:28 PM, Manu wrote:
>>
>> I know these feels so well.
>> People take their one experience, and that's the truth on the matter.
>> The sad part is, it's actually a massive missed opportunity! If these
>> colleagues posted here, and instead were greeted by recognition of
>> their issue, and provided a satisfactory work-around, or even a prompt
>> fix, they would have taken a COMPLETELY different message away from
>> their interaction; it would be "this D comunity is so awesome, I can
>> have confidence that our issues will be handled in a personalised
>> way!", and there's very strong value in that for a business...
>>
> 
> Well *of course* they would love any group that does custom work for them for free! ;)
> 
> But I think, therein lies one of the big shortcomings we have in promoting D:
> 
> Around here, we complain and whine and...erm...b***h (don't need another of Walter's secret PC-enforment emails) about "this is a volunteer project, we're not getting paid for this, blah blah blah"...
> 
> *AND YET*: We don't have NO crystal clear, obvious way for people to actually say "I need this, SO HERE, TAKE MY MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR IT!!!" (Sure, we know that Walter's been open to stuff like that, but do prospective D users know that?)
> 
> That's what we need. Solves everyone's problems. Improves D. Gets us around the "not backed by a company" problems. Brings businesses into D instead of turning them away at the gates. I mean, shoot: *We* want users, we want money, we want to get paid to work on/with D. *They* have money and want things done. Let's get together, right?!! Everybody happy!

Shoot, *just* noticed now this new opencollective stuff *does* offer that!

That needs to go straight up on the dlang front page, stat!!!

On 22 March 2018 at 18:25, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On 03/18/2018 11:43 PM, Norm wrote:
>>
>>
>> We don't want to be treated special. We don't want to give back. This is the *entire* point.
>>
>
> An attitude like that and there's any wonder it didn't work out? Sheesh.
>
> This is the thing about OSS: The business willing to give back (and there are many such businesses) are the ones that reap benefits. The companies that wilfully cling to zero-sum bullshit are on their own, by their own choice, and open themselves to allowing their competitors to take the advantage for themselves. That is the way of the world, that is the way of reality.
>
> D can't be held responsible for self-defeating zero-sum, "us vs them" mentalities. Sheesh.

Small companies are often at a resource-shortage as it is... they probably wouldn't be looking for potential productivity increase opportunities (like using D instead of C) if that wasn't the case.

On Friday, 23 March 2018 at 02:42:12 UTC, Manu wrote:

> Small companies are often at a resource-shortage as it is... they probably wouldn't be looking for potential productivity increase opportunities (like using D instead of C) if that wasn't the case.

IMO we need to be honest with them so they don't waste time on D that they don't have if it can't meet their needs. There's a non-zero chance that you'll run into problems, and they need to know that they might have to do some things themselves, and move on if that's not something they can do.

On Friday, 23 March 2018 at 01:43:49 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> On 03/18/2018 11:28 PM, Manu wrote:
>> 
>> I know these feels so well.
>> People take their one experience, and that's the truth on the matter.
>> The sad part is, it's actually a massive missed opportunity! If these
>> colleagues posted here, and instead were greeted by recognition of
>> their issue, and provided a satisfactory work-around, or even a prompt
>> fix, they would have taken a COMPLETELY different message away from
>> their interaction; it would be "this D comunity is so awesome, I can
>> have confidence that our issues will be handled in a personalised
>> way!", and there's very strong value in that for a business...
>> 
>
> Well *of course* they would love any group that does custom work for them for free! ;)
>
[snip]

All that was expected of D in the tests that I supervised was zero blocking bugs and documented features to be complete and working as advertised. We did not expect special treatment or new features to be implemented on whim without giving back in time or cash.

While personally I agree with your sentiments regarding OSS, my experience has been that most companies will only donate cash or time when a tool has already proven itself to be a useful.

Cheers,
Norm

On 3/18/2018 7:56 PM, Norm wrote:
> My workplace has stopped using D after a 6 month trial, which finished in Jan 2018. Several developers did post here during that period when blocked by a bug or incomplete feature, only to be told if they want it fixed they can always submit a PR.

What are the bugzilla issues on those?

On Friday, 23 March 2018 at 03:28:05 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/18/2018 7:56 PM, Norm wrote:
>> My workplace has stopped using D after a 6 month trial, which finished in Jan 2018. Several developers did post here during that period when blocked by a bug or incomplete feature, only to be told if they want it fixed they can always submit a PR.
>
> What are the bugzilla issues on those?

This is just a few cut-paste from the collated list. Some were reported but found later to be duplicates, many were existing bugs, so no new bugzilla was created in those cases.

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18055
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17942
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16317
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16189
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17949
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15511
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16107

We had no problem with installation or IDE support like many forum posts seem to talk about. Untar DMD tarball just worked when bin put on the path for Win, Mac and Linux. This easy installation to $HOME/somewhere was a bonus most developers liked and many thought even nicer than installing Python.

I feel like I've been bashing D here but that wasn't my intention at all. I am a D convert, broken beyond repair. All our developers liked D as a language. The biggest win I think was the ability to write code that cleanly brought together C, C++ and Python.

Cheers,
Norm