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#! rnews 3888 bsd Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!garnet.bmr.gov.au!como.dpie.gov.au!news.gan.net.au!act.news.telstra.net!vic.news.telstra.net!news.mira.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!gatech!newsxfer2.itd.umich.edu!agate!reason.cdrom.com!usenet 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 Lines: 48 Message-ID: <31595019.59E2B600@FreeBSD.org> References: <4hqav8$kmo@nntp.interaccess.com> <3140F2B6.41C67EA6@freebsd.org> <4i1qp4$bmj@nntp5.u.washington.edu> <4i50q6$64i@uriah.heep.sax.de> <4i727m$1hl@nntp5.u.washington.edu> <4j0mhb$r6i@calypso.bns.com.au> <31559EE7.59E2B600@FreeBSD.org> <4ja7fp$b6h@hole.sdsu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: time.cdrom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2-CURRENT i386) 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