A case of FreeBSD users shooting all FreeBSD users in the foot

Roger 'Rocky' Vetterberg listsub at 401.cx
Tue Oct 14 01:38:38 PDT 2003


Mike Hoskins wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Roger 'Rocky' Vetterberg wrote:
> 
>> os's themself, it was the communities he didnt like.
>> Appareantly, when he tried FreeBSD he turned to IRC for help,
>> and some morons in a #freebsd channel didnt have enough sense
>> to behave like grown ups. He turned to OpenBSD instead, and got
>> some of the infamous OpenBSD attitude on the mailinglists. Now,
>> he runs just about every os except free and open.
> 
> as others have already pointed out, this happens in just about
> every IRC "community".  a project's "community" extends beyond
> IRC.  i've known a lot of very helpful BSD gurus.  sure, they may
> shout "RTFM" if you ask a question on the first page of the
> handbook, but who wouldn't?

I have never complained about the friendly RTFM pointers that solves 
most of the questions newbies might have, but if you spend some time 
on IRC you would see that helpfull pointers to documentation is 
actually very rare in a lot of IRC channels. Maybe not all of them, 
but a lot.

> the point is, IRC is IRC and has very little to do with the
> integrity of...  anything.  especially FreeBSD.

Exactly, and thats why I say its a shame that IRC scares so many 
potential BSD users away.

 > if you really base your critical
> operations decisions on "touchy feely" IRC encounters...  well,
> i'll just continue laughing to myself.

I never said I make any decisions based on IRC experiences. Im 
already a die hard BSD believer, and have already made my decision. 
Ive used BSD since 2.2 and have no intention to stop now.
The question as I understood it was if IRC might influence people to 
actually choose other os's or not. I say it does.
If it is wise to use IRC as a reference when you choose is a 
completely different matter which I wont even go into here, since I 
think the answer is pretty obvious.

--
R



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