[plug] Mandrake Bug announce warning rant ahead

[Scott Middleton]

<rant>
I am pissed off..
Has anyone seen an official announcement to the Mandrake users that
using their latest and greatest will completely stuff their CDROM?
I don't care that it is not their fault. I don't care that Suse has the
same problem nor do i care if they have found a fix. I was told because
i subscribe to PLUG. I am on the announcements list at Mandrake but it
is usually 2 weeks behind. Maybe i will receive an official notice in
two weeks!
 
I meet people everyday who run Mandrake but are not on any Mailing List.
They are not activists, they just don't want to pay for software and
they don't want to steal it either. How are they supposed to know when
it is not even on the Mandrake Club front page?  

I think this is a very important piece of information that should be
well publicised by them at least in an effort to have some credibility.
This just seems typical of M$ worrying about bottom line rather than the
users of the product. I expect a  big blazon across their homepage
saying "Please be aware that Mandrake 9.2 can destroy your CDROM". Or at
least; some official notice.

I suppose what really pisses me off is i have now lost one of my major
Linux selling points. "Linux is good because it doesn't hide its faults,
it acknowledges them and then fixes it". 

I didn't lose any CDROMs only because i didn't (fortunately) upgrade all
the machines that are running Mandrake. My home machine luckily doesn't
have LG CDROM and is working wonderfully. So for me it wasn't the cost
of membership + 1 or more CDROMs but for many others it was. 

Even worse for Mandrake it only affects the financial contributors. The
people who are starting to make Mandrake profitable, this really can't
be good business decision for them. I can live with bugs and mistakes
but i can't live with irresponsible behaviour and not informing users is
plainly irresponsible. I will have to reconsider being a financial
member next year.

Maybe i am overreacting about people having to buy a new CDROM, forget
the warranty, who wants to wait weeks/months for a replacement one. I am
just a bit disappointed in Mandrake and their lack of urgency in
informing the public.

</rant>

Regards

-- 
Scott Middleton
Linux Information Technology
www.linuxit.com.au
scott at linuxit.com.au
(08) 9331 8051

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