Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 11:15:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Simon Shapiro <Shimon@i-Connect.Net> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@futuresouth.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: group assignments from make world. Message-ID: <XFMail.971008111508.Shimon@i-Connect.Net> In-Reply-To: <26899.876329950@time.cdrom.com>
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Hi "Jordan K. Hubbard"; On 08-Oct-97 you wrote: > [Redirected to -chat; we've left the charter of -hackers now] Yup. you practice what you teach... ... > So there's more to this mindset than just trying to deflect too many > questions from the electronic equivalent of several thousand people > looking over one's shoulder, people also need to go into something > like -stable or -current with their eyes fully open, and "yer on yer > own, kid." appears to be a time-tested eye-opener. ;) I think we may be talking past each other, while agreeing on two different things: Let's, for example, take the PPP errors I am getting with -current. I posted (and responded to) several message on this subject. I did so, because I detected an error condition I though is not always obvious. My goal wa to raise the issue and offer an opportunity, to the proper party (many times I do not know who that may be) to know that an error condition exists and to use my facilities to test for it; Not every error is reproducable everywhere. Right? Now, If my purpose was to just have my connection to the office working, solving ``my'' problem, then we have a legitimate issue in re-directing the inquiry to reduce traffic. If my attitude would have been ``The darn FreeBSD thing is broken again, YOU fix it!'', then I should switch to M$ or SUN for a while. I understand that if -current is broken, I have no claim, except for trying to help fix it. I also understand that I am owed as much as I paid. As I do not pay the FreeBSD project much, not much is owed to me, -current -stable or otherwise. My point is that the lines are blurry here, it is a value problem, not a concept problem. If I choose to depreciate the list with ``you fix my problem because you owe me'' things, I am choosing the wrong. If I choose to ask questions that are the results of problems, instability, breakage, lack of documentation, etc. then I am choosing the right (all my opinion). Maybe splitting the hackers list into SCSI (already there), kernel, networking, archeology (UUCP :-), etc. will allow us to focus more clearly on what we choose to track. This in addition to a bit of policing (self and otherwise) will greatly help. > The reality is also that many developers still *do* help anyone with a > legitimate question, often devoting many hours to this (like Joerg, > our one-man USENET tech support team, or Doug White, our one-man > freebsd-questions tech support team!), but it needs to be seen by the > users as the charitable donation that it is and no guarantee of any > further such support in the future - it's purely take it as you go*. There is no guarantee anyway. We all assume certain things by observation, but there are no assumptions. --- Sincerely Yours, Simon Shapiro Atlas Telecom Senior Architect 14355 SW Allen Blvd., Suite 130 Beaverton OR 97005 Shimon@i-Connect.Net Voice: 503.799.2313
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