[begin quote] On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 7:19 PM, Matthias Kilian <k...@outback.escape.de> wrote:
> What detail in the original reply Theo sent to the OP (and quoted > it later on this list) was rude? The lack of an answer. He could have said "Yes. Check your nearest search engine for details". Which would have conveyed more information in fewer characters. But instead he chose to just get annoyed at the question. Like it or not, OpenBSD developers have a horrible culture of being rude to those genuinely asking for information. Simply pointing the poster in the direction of the documentation without being so abrupt would achieve much more. But hey, what would I know? I've been using BSD since the '80s, and yet I've been told that I'm the sort of person OpenBSD doesn't need, and to go away. That should probably tell you something... FWIW, I still use OpenBSD, but now only on a firewall, and I've given up on interacting with the community. I have a Linux desktop, although I don't run the bloated horrors that are GNOME and KDE -- I haven't sunk that far yet :-) Tet -- b It seems intuitively obvious to me, which means that it might be wrong.b -- Chris Torek [end quote] The above is precisely the point that is being missed by all you apologists for the behavior of some of the OpenBSD developers. Yes, a lot of effort has gone into the documentation and it's excellent, and sometimes questions get asked that could be answered by reading. Some of those questions occur because the questioner is used to a less-well-documented environment. Others are just lazy. But the key point is that none of this justifies the level of abusiveness that sometimes characterizes the responses of people in-the-know about OpenBSD (in my opinion, Theo's response to the OP is not an example of this). The concept that the documentation needs to be consulted *before* asking questions can be conveyed firmly but politely, as opposed to the junior-high-school-level behavior that occurs too frequently. After getting subjected to some of this nonsense personally, having asked a question on openbsd-tech (and was in the midst of a useful exchange with Bob Beck until it was interrupted out of the blue by someone who apparently enjoys behaving like an unruly 10-year-old; it had nothing to do with reading or not reading documentation), I'd had enough of the general tone of this group and stopped using OpenBSD (the system is good, but it's not irreplaceable), despite admiration for the quality of the work and having made a substantial financial contribution to the project last year. And the latter brings up an interesting point: you ask for contributions to the project, and yet you treat the user community with unnecessary disdain. I simply don't see what you gain by behaving as you do. I'd use this system in a heartbeat, and would continue to contribute financially, if the unnecessary rudeness went away. I'm not talking about compromising principles. I'm talking about expressing them as polite adults. I suspect there are a lot more out there who feel as I do (after my little adventure on openbsd-tech, I got a number of private emails from such people). I think you are shooting yourselves in the collective foot. /Don Allen
