From owner-freebsd-stable Tue May 25 21:42:14 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from kusanagi.boing.com (silver234.mminternet.com [209.241.149.234]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EBE8115051 for ; Tue, 25 May 1999 21:42:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from boing@kusanagi.boing.com) Received: (from boing@localhost) by kusanagi.boing.com (8.9.3/8.9.2) id VAA06933; Tue, 25 May 1999 21:42:09 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from boing) Message-Id: <199905260442.VAA06933@kusanagi.boing.com> Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 21:42:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Geff Hanoian Subject: Re: [Q] How stable is FreeBSD 3.X ? To: jkh@zippy.cdrom.com Cc: boing@boing.com, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <12189.927692884@zippy.cdrom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 25 May, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: >> little kids. But, perhaps people that aren't holding on so tight >> should be the first level of "support" so to speak? Has that been >> considered? > > That's questions@freebsd.org and where most folks asking questions > should stay, but still they wander into more developer-oriented > mailing lists like -current and -stable and then some developers chew > on them a little. We direct them to -questions, every bit of > documentation we have points to -questions, but still some guys just > *insist* on ignoring the advice and doing the equivalent of walking > through Chicago's south side at 3am. There's just no protecting such > people. :) Look the problem is this. The user. If you build more proper access channels, you're assuming that people will read and use one of those channels. So this doesn't apply to someone that is going to just post and say, "This sucks". That person isn't even going to know ABOUT.TXT exists! Let alone know where to post. We're lucky the poster found anything at all, but chances are -stable was the first thing they latched on to and even if it isn't that's not the point. What are you going to do? Educate everyone? Or just swallow the pride and be polite? I don't understand why all the developers seem to have this, "I am perfect" attitude, and fix the "user". If you fix the support channels, they'll build a better idiot to break them. Why is that so hard to grasp? Obviously these users haven't looked at the code. And they don't know how good it is. To them it doesn't work. And it just might be their hardware or the OS, we don't know and we won't know now. The loss that is taking place today is HUGE. But apparently I've just opened my eyes to it. It's been here all along. :( It seems you have to be UNIX versed to post a problem, but if you are, you're not going to post the problem. Chances are you're going to find the problem and send a personal email to a developer and say, "hey, this fixed that if anyone cares." For the record I'm not perfect and I do take FreeBSD pretty seriously. People at work use linux and like to have the debates, which I don't start usually. Sometimes it's tough, but you have to remain professional and proper or you're not aiding to the cause, but pushing people further away. Geff To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message