OGo: No go so far (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 7:38 UTC (Tue) by libra (guest, #2515)
In reply to: OGo: No go so far (NewsForge) by pavlicek
Parent article: OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Would you be that much astonished if such a kind of publicity and claims where made by a commercial company anticipating on the stable release of their product?
I guess you wouldn't noticed the claims of a proprietary software company even if they were ten times the ones of OGo with a reliability of half the one of OGo. And you wouldn't notice that because it is far too common nowadays for people to take time to notice.

When I want to know if a product fits my need I read the feature list, relase note, todo and bug lists, technical papers if available, and then I try it to see if it fits our needs.
I'm sure that people who read the article did the same as me and most of them certainly decided that the project was interesting, but could wait a few days before they try it after reading the details on the OGo site.

The benefit of the article is that it attracted our attention on an interesting and emerging project, and it gave us the opportunity to add a bookmark in our browser. For real test we will wait, but I personnaly didn't feel fooled by the article.

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OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 10:52 UTC (Tue) by flutonix (guest, #12933) [Link]

I think the point is that the press release has a greater change to gain coverage in traditional media. Media that reports the press release in question might not check things like todo and bug lists (which is a bad thing, IMHO). Target audience of such media is usually not so technically oriented and might include people who has power to make a decisions within the organization they are working.

Its not hard to imagine some senior manager to get interested in and eventually disappointing because he/she got the wrong idea about the maturity of the software.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 13:23 UTC (Tue) by pavlicek (guest, #323) [Link]

>Would you be that much astonished if such a kind of publicity and claims where made by a commercial company anticipating on the stable release of their product?

If a commercial product release included the text I posted above and the product could not even be installed, I would cross that company off my list of potential software providers. I do not work with companies that lie to me as a consumer. Likewise, most folks in the Open Source world take an extremely dim view of liars.

I am willing to believe that the press release jumped the gun and anticipated what will be once the configuration issues are finally conquered. But it was still a grave mistake which could cost them credibility with IT managers who actually read and believed the release. They should have saved the glowing pronouncements until they lined up with the facts. Or at least they should have had the good sense to use the future tense in the release.

Misrepresentation of the facts is a disease in the IT industry. The Open Source world survives on accurate communication between its members. This press release crosses the line.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 15:19 UTC (Tue) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link]

You are mostly right, and I agree with the fact that "This press release crosses the line."
Anyway as you write "If a commercial product release included the text I posted above and the product could not even be installed, I would cross that company off my list of potential software providers", I guess that you have cross Microsoft from your list of software providers (or never tried some of their products maybe).
My point was mostly to say that even if the press release of OGo is not good, it is not worse than many other in the wild. But true it is something that should not happen in the OSS world, and the fact that others do it in the proprietary software world is not an excuse for them, just a fact.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 15:50 UTC (Tue) by pavlicek (guest, #323) [Link]

>I guess that you have cross Microsoft from your list of software providers

Personally, I crossed them off in 1997 when I went with a Linux desktop.

But this is worse than just exaggerating the capabilities of the software. If you download the software and follow the configuration instructions, it will not run. Not at all. Totally non-functional. Zero ability to do work of any kind.

With help from the mailing list and with massive time lost poking around, I managed to get it to limp a bit, but it wasn't even working enough to test. This is not a case of the usual commercial fluff and bravado; this is trying to pass off a pre-alpha software kit as "enterprise ready." And that's a practice which must end ASAP.