Every fricking time you want to download something, there's the ritual of pretending that you probably want the source code to compile it on your own system. Do any of you r-slurs even know where this comes from?
In the 1970s-1980s you'd be working on all kinds of hardware, and this is gonna blow your fricking toddler minds, but it wasn't ARM, it wasn't even x86. Actual businesses were using mainframes through this era, not using Apple IIs to do bank transactions and control manufacturing equipment like the latest Netflix "documentary" might have told you. Again zoomer, the weren't using mainframes because they were cave men. These were extremely sophisticated with multiple processors running multiple tape drives and hard disk platters carefully synchronized for maximum utilization. My dad probably did more work at CDC than you'll ever do in a lifetime.
They came in many kinds. You had HP (they were the good ones), Unisys, Sperry and Burroughs before they merged into Unisys, DEC, etc.. You had workstations (a concept a zoomer will never understand) running weird proprietary versions of UNIX. It was the fricking wild west. Everyone had a legitimate need for the source code to adapt it to their hardware and their operating system.
So back then you would download the source code and tweak it to fit your own system. In 2024 this is not an issue. But they still go through this ritual of offering you the source code and giving you dead links to people who might have compiled it once. You fricking butthole, delivering the product to the customer is your job. If you can't (or don't believe in ) doing that, then please announce that the world that FOSS is something you use sometimes but you rely on proprietary software.
I cannot tell you how fricking enraged I am when I see "source" as the first choice on the download page. This is like somebody saying they were on LRRPs, in Vietnam, they were the first Egyptian/Israeli to cross the canal in 1973. It's stolen valor from people you've never met who did this before you were born. This was way way way before you were even born.
I'm anticipating a lot of "but Linux can do that!" I just want to cut a few seconds out of a fricking video file but apparently there is no free front end to FFMPEG. So I go to get FFMPEG to do it from the command line . It's fricking insane, this should have been available 20 years ago. I go to these individuals' website and they offer me the source code. So that in 20 FRICKING 24 I can compile it and then figure out how to get it actually available on my command line. It should be easy, right? Getting Java classpathes straightened out is easy.
Maybe I come from a different background. My dad and I were trained in the "get shit done as fast as possible because time is money" mindset. Every time you midgetdicks make people click on something, or teach them click on something, that costs time which costs money. You think it doesn't? Go to the girlboss running IBM HQ in Manila with hundreds of staff. Making really shit software that wastes peoples' time adds up to pissing her off really fast which adds up to your company losing contracts. Which... Oh yeah, I guess in your generation you don't fired. You get an additional therapist to help you navigate the challenges of managing a huge corporation when you're totally unqualified and don't really give a shit.
Anyway, frick you. At this point I just want to fish with my old man.
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why don't u open an issue
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