Daemon's Advocate article

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Monday,  1 March 2004 at 11:41:21 -0800, Scott I. Remick wrote:
> --- Johnson David <DavidJohnson at Siemens.com> wrote:
>> I'm a desktop user. I have noticed more than once some active disdain
>> towards the desktop by FreeBSD developers. Why is this? Did I miss the
>> sign out front saying "servers only"? You don't have to be a
>> dumb-downed system like Lindows to be suitable for the desktop.
>
> I have to concur. For some reason, there seems to be a common attitude that
> if you use FreeBSD to any extent, you must be a C++ programmer with the
> ability to write drivers and patch applications. While I fully respect the
> fact that this is a volunteer effort, the above can come off as rather harsh
> and deterring for a new user. We FreeBSD users often scold the Linux
> community for their attitude problems... why must we replace one bad
> attitude with another in our own community?
>
> The people who volunteer their free time for the good of the FreeBSD
> community can do a lot of things in their sleep which are beyond the
> abilities of the common desktop user. Perhaps some have some free time,
> perhaps others find a request simple enough that they can balance their time
> to handle something that would help someone else. But to make a polite
> request and get back "Why don't you port it yourself if you want it?" or
> "patch/driver submissions welcome" conveys an impression that FreeBSD is for
> developers only... if you can't code, your input isn't desired.

Yes, this attitude gets on my nerves too.

> I'm sorry to see Greg leave. I own his book and found it very useful.

I'm not leaving: I'm still here.  I've just left the core team.

Greg
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