Worship the fish...

[morger@dolphins.ch (Philipp Morger)]

Hi folks

I first got in touch with OpenBSD Release 2.7... Since then I enyoied
the really cool stickers, bought 2 T-Shirts.... and even thinking abaout
to buy a poster for my living room - but it weren't those neat "add-ons"
which persuaded me to use OpenBSD, it was the clean and secure design. 

But a few times the fish "bit the dust"... once it was a fault
Controller and another time was a setting to low.... and even someone
like me who dosn't read/write/speak/think in C was able to solve the
problem.... but as soon as a ddb pop's up it's like "game over" for
me... of course I try to get as much information abaout it... and
sometimes I was able to solve the problem (well, other fellows hat the
same and posted their solution - or some of the folks at @misc were able
to get me some very good hints) - but there is a "Bug reporting
facility" - which I think should be able to give some hints (which I
almost contacted as last resort option)... 

And as such I contacted bugs@openbsd.org about my latest "crashing
system" - and due to the nature of the bug I was only able to do jpeg's
of the ddb console.... but I never got an answer... I thought: hey, they
maybe don't like pictures I tried it with a plain text mail... but
neither an answer.... so I figured out a more last resort option and
wrote to theo abaout bugs@openbsd.org - and I assume he is quite busy so
I don't expect an answer quite soon.... but I think it should be
manageable to reply within a week.

Please don't think of me that I cring araound, just because one of my
boxes is crashing.... I think it's just sad, that theres almost no
support from bugs@openbsd.org, although I tried, and I think I did it
the right way, and even if not I'm willing to learn... but it seems that
to use OpenBSD one must be able to read kernel-dumps... or have time to
wait for a next release. And to be honest - and I really don't wan't to
start a flamebed... but I know of a very big software-company which has
almost the same tactic in the matter of support. 

And to be further honest an "operating system without support" is as
usefull as a rotting fish..... - or in other words it's very very sad
that such a good piece of software (despite when it crashes) just dosn't
get used 'cos the people who got problems don't get help.

I assume there will be some flames on this post - save those with the
content "no one said use it" and "you didn't payed for support", and
it's not my intent to blame anyone - I just wan't to show the problem
why I have to migrate an imap server from openbsd to linux: Because I
didn't got any support from OpenBSD staff and too damn stupid and out of
time to learn C and read all the other "How to become a BSD Kernel
wizard" Stuff.

So, if you still reading this, I'd like to thank you for the time spent,
for ignoring my ugly english and most of all (if you did) the hints and
tipps you mailed me in the past - and I'm looking forward that there's a
time when OpenBSD gets some better support

Thanks
Philipp