*BSD News Article 64453


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From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: FreeBSD support [was Re: God Damn partition crap!]
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 1996 06:26:33 -0800
Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM
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Message-ID: <31595019.59E2B600@FreeBSD.org>
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To: Larry Riedel <larryr@saturn.sdsu.edu>

Larry Riedel wrote:
> In my opinion, attitude is what will determine the degree of widespread
> popularity of FreeBSD which will attract talented new developers to
> supplement existing developers. I think the problems average users have

And those that know me will probably note that I generally go way out of
my way to help users and otherwise be politic.  I have "customers" of
FreeBSD for whom I have provided significant ongoing tech support for
months, and I'm actually more than happy to do so (having a thorny
problem with FreeBSD?  Send me email or call me up - my phone numbers
are in my finger entry for jkh@freebsd.org).

However, there is a line that one has to draw in order to provide such
tech support and remain sane, and I don't think that I'm particularly
unique that way.  If someone has a problem and is willing to work with
me in solving it, understanding all the while that I'm doing them a
favor, then I'm happy to go way out of my way in helping them with it to
the best of my ability.  I don't want money or fawning expressions of
thanks or any of that sort of thing, I simply expect that person to be
cooperative and polite.

If someone, on the other hand, cannot or will not see this and takes my
offer of help as public permission to beat me about the head and
shoulders then I will cut that person off at the knees and have no
compunctions about saying that anyone with a similar attitude can take a
long walk off a short pier.  Chronic complainers only wear down the
developers of FreeBSD, make them angry and otherwise impede progress for
EVERYONE.  A volunteer developer who's pissed off at being beaten up on
is not a developer who's going to go back to the terminal with a good
attitude, and if he's *really* upset you might as well write off
whatever it was he was working on that day - we've even had developers
leave altogether, so angered were they by some ungrateful user.  Taken
to these extremes, developers often stop answering questions entirely
and remove their home telephone numbers from their finger entries.  Then
everyone loses, even those who would have been unfailingly polite had
they only been able to REACH somebody, and those users then go away when
they're unable to get any tech support.

So if my telling off someone in public perhaps scares a few people away
then I think it's well worth the price to also let others know that such
an attitude is not appreciated and that they should tread carefully lest
the well be poisoned for everyone.  Failing to make this plain, even
brutally plain, will only lose me users anyway when the tech support
dries up.  That's a far more damaging long-term scenario than a little
negative PR in the present, I can assure you.
-- 
- Jordan Hubbard
  President, FreeBSD Project