On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 07:23:22PM -0500, Tom Metro said:
> Dennis Peterson wrote:
> >>Jim Redman wrote:
> >>>Your opinions, seem to be the prevalent attitude of the vocal
> >>>members of this list - if you don't suffer, it wasn't worth it.
> >
> >His specific problem is he lacks the skill to install and manage the 
> >product.
> 
> It's rather sad to see that this elitist attitude - which was 
> commonplace on Usenet back in the early 90's - is still alive and well 
> here in 2006. I'm not sure why people who otherwise are enthusiastic 
> supporters of open source don't see how this damages the community.

I agree that the argument "you don't want to spend your time looking
at gdb/valgrind/whatever output, so your input isn't welcome" is a
flawed argument.  I do feel that we have to ask a little bit from people
who intend to run servers, though.  I have always felt that one of the
reasons we have giant waves of botnets is the idea that anyone can run
an internet facing computer.  Not to say we can't be more welcoming to
newcomers, but I do think we have to ask for something in return.

> It would also be nice to see the project leaders show a better attitude 
> towards package maintainers. Not to say they necessarily have a poor 
> attitude towards them, but there wasn't anything positive put forth in 
> this thread. No one expects ClamAV to natively support specific 
> distributions, but a statement along the lines of "yeah, we've heard the 
> Fedora RPM isn't the smoothest install, but we're working with the 
> maintainer to improve it." Or, "we've accepted and incorporated numerous 
> patches from downstream packagers, so if you're having a problem with a 
> specific package, your best recourse is to report the problem to the 
> maintainer and have them report to us any changes that need to be made."

Speaking as a downstream packager, I have always had a very good
relationship with all of the clamav team members, except when I manage
to put my foot in my mouth.  They have always been curteous, respectful,
and willing to accomodate issues that arise from the specific wierdnesses
of working within distro restraints.  Even when I manage to put my
foot in my mouth, they have managed to have the good grace to forget
reasonably quickly :)

It's true that, in general, it's best to run as recent a version of the
code base as possible for support and/or security issues, but that's the
same with every codebase, and not particular to clamav.
-- 
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|  Stephen Gran                  | Catharsis is something I associate with |
|  [EMAIL PROTECTED]             | pornography and crossword puzzles.   -- |
|  http://www.lobefin.net/~steve | Howard Chaykin                          |
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