why I am upset

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Saturday, 22 January 2005 at  9:53:53 +0000, doug at safeport.com wrote:
> On Sun, 27 May 2012, Warren Block wrote:
>
>> There can be a tremendous investment of time in using software, whether
>> "free" or not.  Money too, often.
>>
>> Those who work to write, port, and support free software also spend a
>> tremendous amount of time in doing that.  Money too, often.
>>
>> So both parties have a large investment, and it's easy but counterproductive
>> to get emotional about it.  Take a deep breath, be polite, and try to
>> appreciate the other guy's problems.  Otherwise it just ends up creating more
>> problems, and there are already enough.
>
> Warren makes a great point. In years past Greg Lehey used to post,
> "How to ask a question", or something similar.

"How to get best results from FreeBSD questions".

> Its worth resurrecting that.

It's still there in the FreeBSD web site:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/freebsd-questions/
If people are getting upset, maybe it's worth reading it again.

> As I recall, the major points were: Nobody here is getting paid to
> do this; there are a great number of people with a wealth of
> information willing to help; and, its up to the one asking the
> question to do it in such a way as to peak someones interest.

Yes, that's a good paraphrase.

FWIW I think that Mitja has a point, even if in his frustration he put
it badly.  It's a pity that nobody here tried to get him to calm down
and say what went wrong or enter a PR.  While it's true that we're all
volunteers, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be proud of our product and
want to fix it if things go wrong.

Greg
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