Am 14 Apr 2010 um 10:11 schrieb Zachary Uram:
As a long time Linux user I will soon try out OpenBSD, I have been
reading the list emails and contacted 1 OpenBSD top person who was
very rude. There is some of the "RTFM" or "get lost" attitude in
Linux, but if a questioner seems sincere there is usually a certain
level of friendliness in Linux community towards them. Just what I
have briefly observed the OpenBSD community is more abrupt and less
interested in helping newbies, they prefer one find the answer solely
on their own if possible. I must say I detect a certain attitude that
smacks of superiority and even condescension at times. Is this a fair
assessment of 6the OpenBSD culture?
Zach
<>< http://www.fidei.org ><>
I'd take this for "why can't we all just get along?" scolding.
I'd argue OpenBSD has the best documentation of any OS I've ever seen.
Not answering these questions lets the developers get on with it. Non-
developer members of the community know that the docs rock, so they've
got a reasonable basis for thinking that anyone who's asking a
question with a documented answer is being lazy (thus implicitly
rejecting the sincerity standard you're proposing). People new to
OpenBSD may need to get used to having documentation that doesn't
suck, but the point is that OpenBSD also gets considerable advantage
from having docs to which to refer. Not just developers but the
OpenBSD community generally would rather emphasise that distinction to
the point of hostility to accommodating people who don't (or don't
yet) appreciate it. I follow you in terms of a sense of superiority,
in that I think that the approach taken is demonstrably better, even
if it's not intuitive to those with a perspective shaped by other
communities (and may be sufficiently jarring to some people that they
don't give it a full go because they don't understand the sense in
which the OpenBSD community is nevertheless very much there to help),
but I don't think it's condescending to try to protect a hard-earned
and highly beneficial distinction. To the extent that such insistence
on self-help through documentation excellence selects against
community growth in a direction where bigger wouldn't be better,
certainly not on the terms that have allowed OpenBSD to prosper thus
far, I don't see that as objectionable, either. Thus in proposing that
people be given the benefit of the doubt (sincere), the problem is
precisely that the OpenBSD community is signalling clear distinctions
about what it considers to be the standard of sincerity, based on
strong functional motives. To put the problem more generally: how
exactly does one accommodate such contrary standards without
undermining the standard you mean to support?
To the extent that the Linux community has a soft spot for n00bs, I'd
take it as largely an accommodation of the fact that documentation
quality is widely inconsistent in quality or the bare fact of its
existence. I don't think it can be taken to suggest that somehow the
people who respond to questions about Linux have some greater
generosity of spirit than can be found here, and I think that their
reasons for behaving as they do are also functional. Why not ask
instead why the Linux community continues to work around the root of
the problem, thus creating some of the forces of habit that you treat
with apparently uncritical discernment? Even if you don't find
yourself comfortable here, you might reconsider the going standards of
the Linux community and challenge those instead.
I don't mean to suggest that it's all sorted out in OpenBSD-land, but
I reckon you'd have something more compelling (not to forget fair) to
say if you took these differences and their rationales more thoroughly
into account.
Cheers,
Bayard
