From owner-freebsd-chat  Wed Jul  2 15:55:02 1997
Return-Path: <owner-chat>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA00279
          for chat-outgoing; Wed, 2 Jul 1997 15:55:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from time.cdrom.com (root@time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA00270
          for <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>; Wed, 2 Jul 1997 15:55:00 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from time.cdrom.com (jkh@localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.8.6/8.6.9) with ESMTP id PAA16553; Wed, 2 Jul 1997 15:43:02 -0700 (PDT)
To: hoek@hwcn.org
cc: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu>,
        Francisco Reyes <francisco@natserv.com>,
        FreeBSD Chat List <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: Why Not Make tcsh the default shell? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 02 Jul 1997 18:14:22 EDT."
             <Pine.GSO.3.96.970702175830.28963B-100000@james.freenet.hamilton.on.ca> 
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 1997 15:43:02 -0700
Message-ID: <16549.867883382@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> Perhaps the 10% that it _does_ help is more valuable to the
> FreeBSD project (as users, that is) than the 90% that it doesn't
> help.

But as a group of people who are trying to be professional OS
"vendors", that is simply not our determination to make.  Like family,
one does not choose one's customers (as much as one would often like
to, in both cases).

Now the techno-elitist, of which there are many in the UNIX world,
will always look at this classic problem and say "change the user",
whereas the product-realist says "accomodate the user, if possible,
since negative user feedback actually indicates _our_ failure."

I am a realist, and I say that if people aren't reading the docs then
we simply have to make the installation process less reliant on such
doc-reading prerequisites.  The old adage about leading a horse to
water comes to mind here, and even the techno-elitist will agree that
in designing any complex system, a good engineer attempts to avoid
putting undue strain on the weaker areas of it or what's being built
will probably only fall down.  This goes for everything from bridges
to large software systems, and in the latter case it's typically the
user which is the weakest component of all.

					Jordan