Dixit port bad management

[Stacy Millions]

Mihai Militaru wrote:
> Sarcasm may not be an excuse for an irrational behavior. I noted this
> "suprematism" he's talking about as well, although I'd not call it like
> that - it assumes a superiority - but an unnecessary hubris.
> Most questions I investigated since I'm on this system have been
> answered already here and there on the internet by some maintainers,
> things like: "go read the Bible", "it is a problem with your hardware",
> "you've done something wrong." or no answer. Note the period after
> "wrong".

Allow me to provide another perspective. I maintain a number of ports in 
my private ports tree. I find the FreeBSD ports system to be a very 
convenient way for me to maintain software that I use on my systems. 
None of these ports have been committed to (or submitted to be committed 
to) the FreeBSD ports tree. Why? Quite simply, I don't want the headache 
of supporting everyone+dog.

Just because I ported the software to run on FreeBSD does not mean I am 
prepared to support every combination of FreeBSD release and hardware 
and configuration. Just because it works for me doesn't mean it will 
work for you; or that I should be obliged to make it work for you.

Some of the ports in my private tree I no longer use, but if I had 
released any of these ports, someone somewhere would be asking me to 
update the port to the most recent release or fix a bug they found, or 
to help them figure out why it won't work on their system (which happens 
to be a sparc running CURRENT). Well guess what, I don't run current and 
I don't have sparc hardware.

>                          but that assumes that users who are not
> expert should be helped with tips, advices quickstarts 

But why should it be the responsibility of the port maintainer to do 
this? They didn't write the software, they ported it to FreeBSD. In all 
likelihood they, like you, only want to use the software, so they 
created a port and thinking that it might help someone else, they 
released it. And, as we know, no good deed goes unpunished.

> but a lot of them simply don't work, in other words they're empty
> advertising.

How's this, if my port fails to work for you, I will gladly refund to 
you ten times what you have paid me for the port.

>                                                      - eg. a simple
> unanswered question about openssl 

Are you saying that openssl didn't work or you had a question about how 
to use it? I would have a hard time believing that it didn't work and 
this would be the wrong forum to ask a question about how to use 
openssl; the openssl users list would be a much better place to ask.

-stacy