Ben Bucksch
Tue, 10 Sep 2002 23:22:46 -0700
Graham wrote: >So, can I have some guidance? > As for netscape.public.mozilla.* newsgroups and mozilla-*@mozilla.org mailing lists, this is the charter: <http://www.mozilla.org/community.html>. Violating the charter of a newsgroup can make you subject to hostile reactions on any newsgroup. But a note "This is a developer newsgroup, please do not post end user questions here" is not hostile at all, but in fact very friendly, given the circumstance that some Mozilla developer newsgroups have been overrun by end users questions to and extend that they are practically useless for developers, have disrupted communication between them and thus severely harmed development. While the names of these newsgroups were unfortunate to begin with and should be changed, this is no excuse for ignoring Usenet rules like reading the newsgroup a bit and searching for answers / FAQs before posting, in which case this wouldn't be a problem at all. (This has been discussed numerous times and is also offtopic here, so please do not argue about that.) Beonex, on the other hand, has been created specifically to serve end users. As such, questions from end users are welcome on this mailing list. That doesn't relieve basic rules of politeness and efficiency, though, like first trying reasonably hard to solve a problem alone before asking other people. If you are subscribing to commercial support from Beonex, you can ask any question you like, but you will have to pay for the answers, so it is up to you to jugde what is more efficient. >As this is an end user mailing list, can >I raise things about Mozilla and its projects that are relevant to >Beonex, and get an answer from the developer? > > You can raise any questions that are relevant to Beonex, which includes questions relevant to the (large) Mozilla part of Beonex Communicator. Certain people on this list could maybe then pass them up to the right place at mozilla.org, if appropriate. You never have a right to get an answer from or even reach a developer, though (in fact, you have basically no right at all, unless you specifically paid for it. Remember that you never paid for Beonex Communicator, not even through advertizing. We simply do not have the resources to garantee you anything without payment.) Developers' jobs are to write source code etc.; answering (and sometimes even reading, as in the case of the Mozilla dev groups) user tech support questions will prevent them from doing that.