On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 10:12 PM, Joe Konecny <jkone...@rmtohio.com> wrote: > I'm not claiming I can explain the solution to his problem but this is a good > example of why > microsoft is so successful. MS has MVP's (most valuable professional's) (and > they aren't > necessarily on ms's payroll) that hang out in forums and relentless answer > questions that > have been asked thousands of times. With the open source world... you are > usually responded > to with "rtfm" or "don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."
A very helpful classic "howto": http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html also explains why open-source geeks can give the impression you've formed. People answering question that have been already been answered thousands of times are doing nothing but wasting time and bandwidth - not just their's but everyone else's who participates in that list/forum. When my five-year-old pulls a tantrum about changing the DVD "right now", sure it's faster to just do it, but is it the right thing to do? Of course, reasonable questions "should" get answered reasonably promptly, just as every project once past a certain size of user base "should" have decent documentation. The question is who should provide these services? IMO the answer is those users of the free software who don't have the skills to actually help develop it. Free as in freedom but not as in beer - if every BackupPC user that didn't contribute otherwise put in one or two hour per month on a docs wiki, the quality of the project (and therefore its popularity) would be enormous. And the developers wouldn't be pestered with as many questions. <end rant> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Colocation vs. Managed Hosting A question and answer guide to determining the best fit for your organization - today and in the future. http://p.sf.net/sfu/internap-sfd2d _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
