Re: List intolerance VS advocacy

["Scott Sandeman-Allen (RSCorp)" <scott@rscorp.ab.ca>]

In response to darkuncle@darkuncle.net

|the OpenBSD project is really not
|interested in increasing market share, gaining a reputation among 
|businesses, generating corporate sponsors, 

No matter who is involved and what motivates the developers, recognition through
either market share, pride in a good job or whatever, it is an afirmation to see
something you produce become successful. How you measure that may be different.

At some point, any project needs an infusion of replacement $OBJECTS be those
developers, dollars or devices.

|or even knocking off Microsoft or other OSes.

Here we agree. Not a subject to fork up this thread.

|This seems to be a difficult concept to grok, as this question comes up 
|every month or two on misc@, but the answer remains the same. We do this 
|because we like it, and if you like it, great. If you don't, great. 

People care, just about different aspects. When the official website states
"Five years without a remote hole in the default install!" it is a statement of
pride. If you didn't care, you'd be working for M$ or some other defective
company with defective values.

|Don't expect any change in behaviour or in the project either way, unless 
|you are contributing such changes yourself (as opposed to merely 
|requesting them).

Please define 'contribution'. By that do you mean "only those that 'create'
software?" That's like saying "I pay taxes so I 'do' own the road so get out of
my way".

It is attitudes like this that feed the problem. While some newbie may not be
$DEIGHITY's gift to coding, they may be excellent at documentation and
interested in helping do so with some feature(s). Thus enabling someone with
better skill to do more code/debug/$FUNCTION.

You lose because the community is weakened. In a volunteer organization, good
help is hard to find. Nobody is superior, we just have different talents.

Besides, sometimes those "feature requests" are really good ideas.

|The most critical (and generally the weakest) piece of any security 
|platform is the humans running it.

Yes. This is a cross platform issue... just like attitude... oh wait, that's a
people-issue too ;-)

|If a new UNIX novice can't figure out how to use the tools 

That is why they should be encouraged to move to sources of assistance, not
slain on sight. 

Continued offences notwithstanding.

|'RTFM' is one of the oldest phrases in the community, and it rings just 
|as true now as it did when it was first coined.

RTFM has more than one meaning. Interchange Manual with Message - often the
original question has information _demanded_ by the list in subsequent
replies/interchanges.

The bottom line is, if a list member has something constructive to say then they
should please do so. If they are going to give of their time to respond then
they should make sure they are not wasting its value as well as list-bandwidth. 

Some of the responses/flames are as bad as the original spam (hence why I'm not
responding to all the messages in this thread, I have no propriety over the
subject I just see a few bugs in the subroutines).

L8r,

Scott