Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:45:23 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Brian Smith <brians@mandor.dev.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Flaming The Users [was Re: IP bugs in FreeBSD 2.1.5] Message-ID: <28273.845491523@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 16 Oct 1996 08:32:19 PDT." <199610161532.IAA18695@mandor.dev.com>
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> WARNING! This is a flame against a few people, not all of the audience. > You know who you are. If not, just ask your FreeBSD neighbors. Thanks for jumping to our defense, though I feel I should also point out that "the problem" happily isn't quite as big as you might think from recent postings. By and large, we get a LOT of support from the net and the majority of our users seem to be very much aware of what they're getting for free. It's only a few bad apples (who smell much stronger than the others :-) in a whole barrel of good ones. However, since you've raised the topic, there have been some rather more disturbing developments in FreeBSD's user community which I find far more potentially dangerous to our harmony than a few folks screaming "support me!" The first and most disturbing development has been the increasing number of "don't ask me to think, just tell me what to do!" users. Yes, we did expect the influx as an inevitable statistical percentage of any user population, but it's still pretty scary to see so many of them now flooding our questions (and every other) mailing list with their "hello? whats freebsd and can i Run uNIX under it?" questions (and that's one of the more intelligent/intelligible ones). I've been forced to un-subscribe to our questions mailing list, in fact, it's gotten so bad there and nor do I even respond to a good portion of my email anymore (and I used to respond to *every* message personally, it being a small mark of pride). My mailbox is filled with a never-ending stream of people who do NOT want to read what's at http://www.freebsd.org, they do NOT want to study the code, they, in fact, do not wish to invest any time at all in learning FreeBSD (or even UNIX). They only want me to tell them what to do and I, not being a one-man tech support army, just can't do it. So truly, if I had my choice between accolades or a 15 minute pre-investment of time spent in truly trying to understand a problem before bringing it to me (or to the group), I would choose the latter every time. The accolades are nice, and I really do appreciate all the kind words of support I receive, but what I really desire (and what makes me most genuinely happy to see) is for the users to start thinking for themselves. Perhaps some have gotten the wrong impression, but just because I knock my brains out trying to make FreeBSD more *approachable* does not mean that I see its mission as truly similar to that of Microsoft, an organization which will be more than happy to make all your decisions for you in exchange for "a small fee." We are not, to loosely paraphrase Van Jacobsen, in the business of teaching users complete sentences, we're in the business of teaching them words so that they can make their own sentences. If you, the user, are looking for canned advertising slogans then you've simply come to the wrong place. This leads me to the second disturbing development which, for lack of a better description, I'd call "user disenfranchisement." One thing the Linux camp has going for it (and which also has some big down-sides, so don't think I'm advocating it as a model for emulation here) is its "spirit of anarchy." Whether it's true in practice or not, its users generally *feel* that they could contribute any time they wanted to, just as the common man might feel that his personal vote makes a difference in the running of his government [jkh breaks down in cynical laugher for a moment here, but quickly recovers]. Such depth of feeling in your user community can be an amazingly powerful force, not just for hacking the code but in having users evangelize at work about *their* operating system or writing books and magazine articles about *their* operating system. The average Linux user _does_ feel that Linux is *his* operating system and I doubt that 1 in 10 Linux book authors ever contacted Linus and humbly asked his permission before writing a book about Linux - why should they need to? They're writing about *their* OS! Linus may be the god who produces the kernels, but the Linux religion belongs to all of them. With FreeBSD, however, it seems that we start running into some of the unfortunate psychological side-effects of having a centralized development and distribution model. I don't think that anyone would dispute how much it has helped so many aspects of FreeBSD's development, nor its importance as even just a core differentiation point from Linux, but do most users honestly feel that FreeBSD belongs to *them* or to the FreeBSD core team? I think that those users with enough self-confidence as hackers or power-users probably feel a degree of ownership since they've largely mastered the technology, but the average user who might not hack the code but still grow into a book writer or article author probably does not. In his eyes, FreeBSD belongs to the core team and it's thus the core team's problem to promote it - hell, they probably don't want him involved anyway. They'd only spit on his lack of hacking abilities and tell him to go away, right? And so he continues on, perhaps as a happy user but never as someone who feels any sense of personal opportunity to make a difference. I'm making broad psychological generalizations here, of course, and I'm sure there are many users who will protest at this characterization, citing their own involvement and deep personal feelings for FreeBSD. Well, I'm not talking about you guys and I already know about the depth of your feeling from every time I've ever broken something in FreeBSD ["you hurt my baby, you FIEND!"] :-) I'm talking about a more general malaise which I feel has greater long-term potential for harm from the threat of "an evangelism gap." Evangelism is more than nice, it's crucial. With successful evangelism you can overcome almost every other adversity, in fact. Not enough hackers? Evangelize and they'll come or some company will even throw them at you. Need funding? The TV preachers can tell you all about the direct relationship between evangelism and money. Need FreeBSD related jobs for all the core team members and hackers that want them? Evangelize FreeBSD as a good thing and their phones will be ringing off the hook. Evangelism is the single most important user contribution we can receive, and no slight to engineering intended. Geeze, this has gotten really too long, so I guess I'll summarize by simply saying this to any users who are still actually reading at this point: Gratitude is nice, a willingness to learn is better and a genuine feeling of personal involvement in FreeBSD's success is best of all! If you want to lighten our load, just spend a little time studying (AltaVista and Yahoo are your friends! :) before asking questions and take time out to tell your friends or favorite magazines about FreeBSD! The most it costs you is some time and a postage stamp. Jordan
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