I've noticed a disquieting, nay, alarming, trend on this mailing list in the last year or so.
Software Defined Radio has become "cool", it has become the "chic" thing to do in graduate school, or as the foundation for the start up of a new business. Everybody wants to do it. People get on to this list, empty vessels that they are, and determine that they can become "filled up". Now, when I say "empty vessel", I'm talking about the poly-dimensionally clueless here. One would expect, given the "newness" of SDR, that the preponderance of persons on this mailing list would be relatively experienced persons in a related engineering discipline--software, embedded systems, real-time programming, and of course *radio*. It would be reasonable to expect a list like this to offer support to experienced folks who are mostly self-starters, become familiar with Gnu Radio and SDR, to get a few tips here and there about things specifically related to Gnu Radio, publish bugs and "oddnesses", etc. But what has happened is that large numbers of people without *any* experience in *any* of the related disciplines come here, expecting a "free" substitute for a 4-year engineering degree (or equivalent). They pin the success/failure of their project (assigned by their academic advisor, or their manager in commercial situations) on the ability of this list to provide what amounts to free consulting and training. The people on this list who are providing assistance are doing so *as volunteers*. They don't owe anybody anything here. It's a community effort, and the abuse of the good-will of this community is harmful to the community as a whole. I'm not targetting anybody in particular. You know who you are. Knock it off. Now, does anybody know where the power switch on my computer is? :-) -- Marcus Leech Principal Investigator Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium http://www.sbrac.org _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
