*BSD News Article 64524


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From: larryr@saturn.sdsu.edu (Larry Riedel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD support [was Re: God Damn partition crap!]
Date: 27 Mar 1996 18:03:58 GMT
Organization: San Diego State University
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Message-ID: <4jbvue$fdl@hole.sdsu.edu>
References: <4hqav8$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> <31595019.59E2B600@FreeBSD.org>
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Jordan K. Hubbard (jkh@FreeBSD.org) wrote:
> 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).

I cannot imagine one person wholly representing a product with a
potential user base the size of FreeBSD's, so the attitude of a
particular person does not seem significant to me in this context.


> 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.

My attitude is that if I give someone software, free or not, and parts
of it are significantly more difficult to use than they would have been
if they had documentation which a reasonable person would agree should
have been there in the first place, then I am not doing anyone a favor
by providing the missing information via tech support.  In any case, to
me it is not a question of whether or not that attitude is right or wrong,
only the extent to which people will want use the software.


>                        Chronic complainers only wear down the developers
> of FreeBSD, make them angry and otherwise impede progress for EVERYONE.

In the dozens of articles I have seen about adding a disk over the last
year, for example, I have not noticed that those people are all "chronic
compainers," but of course there will always be chronic complainers and
that is a fact which has to be accepted.  The more popularity a product
has, the more chronic complainers there will be.


>            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.

And the product ultimately fails because of the attitude of the developers,
who, instead of being chronic complainers about having to provide adequate
documentation, and tech support when the existing documentation was not
adequate, might have accepted that the degree of popularity the product
could have had was dependent on their exhibiting patience and a positive
attitude towards average users who, because of inadequate documentation,
had difficulty in performing what should be mundane tasks such as adding
a disk to a FreeBSD system.

I think this is a valid way of looking at the situation.  Of course
anyone can say that if developers have to spend all their time with
tech support then they will never do any development, but that would
be a specious oversimplification of reality in my opinion, although
it is certainly true that if developers have been remiss in providing
adequate documentation with their software, then users will have no
choice but to ask for tech support - that is not the fault of the
users, in my opinion.


> 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.

This looks like a vague enough statement that it would be pointless for
me to agree or disagree with it, so I'll just say that in my opinion
the attitude that it is better to have disgruntled users than disgruntled
developers could help to determine the degree of widespread popularity of
FreeBSD, and that I think there is no need for what should be mundane
tasks such as adding a disk to require any tech support for the average
user from a developer so there is no good reason to castigate people
who point this out without correcting the situation.


Larry