> I'm trying to get my organization to seriously consider using more
> open source. Support is a corporate concern. Telling a user to go
> away in a user support group is not a selling point. It's better if
> you just don't respond.
I can't help but jump in here, to hopefully dump a nice big
bucket of cold ice water on everyone to cool them down.. ;)
Back several years ago, Mike and I had some ugly arguments
about the code, direction of Plucker, design, and pretty much all
manner of things.. and we both almost gave up on the project and went
our separate ways.. but now you hardly see much of an argument or
disagreement between us, and we agree on most things.
Realize too, that the language barrier (especially when
conveying analogies, joking jabs, and so on) is going to be a factor.
Mike's English is very good, but sometimes the way his jokes come
across might not convey as well in email, as they would if told in
person. Mike and I have met each other a couple of times, and I'm
still a stupid American, but I think we see eye-to-eye on most things.
Both of us being over 1.8 metres tall also helps ;)
In one respect, I agree with Mike on this issue.. if you have
the time to test the app, you ideally should have the time to spend
narrowing down in the source where it happens, or at least under what
specific reproducable conditions.
I see where he's coming from on that point. Yes, he comes
across harshly... we all do sometimes, but when you have to answer the
same kinds of questions over and over, year after year with various
new waves of users as they join and leave the lists, the responses get
more and more "curt" as time goes on.
On the other hand, I can see where you might not want to dive
head-first into the code, because of lack of time, skill, or any other
number of reasons. With that in mind, just spend the time you can,
testing various conditions to see if it is indeed a bug, or just a
weird anomaly limited to your use of Plucker, or your particular
environment.
As authors of various pieces of the code, we're all going to
get defensive when someone says "Hey, I found a bug, and your product
sucks, but I don't have the time to find or help you fix it!". Just do
what you can to try to make our jobs faster/easier, by doing as much
legwork as you can to narrow down where and when it happens. If you
can't do that by diving into the code, do as much as you can,
communicate it clearly, and let someone else who CAN dive into the
code, delve further. Reporting your results on the list is a good
first step. Getting defensive about them right off, is not, however.
That's all. Nobody is trying to tell you to "go away" (not
that I've seen, and if so, not in any serious way).
Witness the dozens of people on the online bugtracker who
report very silly "bugs" in some part of Plucker. I'm actually
surprised some of us don't respond with even _harsher_ words on the
bugtracker than we do. ;)
"I installed Plucker on Windows, and my machine bluescreened
when I launched Internet Explorer. Can you fix it?"
"I just installed the latest hourly snapshot, and something
doesn't work right..."
Things like that (and much funnier ones), make our day. ;)
So, as self-appointed Plucker "Good-Will" ambassador <grin>, I
say just take it with a grain of salt, and move onward to the next new
feature or finding the next biggest bug. I think we've squashed this
one effectively.
From Mike's 10/Aug post:
'We store the name of the volume that the document is located
on, but the VFS methods require a volume reference, so we
have to "translate" the volume name into a reference. That
will result in an external card access, but it would be a
very short "activity". Maybe that's what you are seeing...'
d.
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