I'd appreciate other opinions on this one. I'm afraid this is a bit long, but you need to get the flavour.....
Smoothwall is a linux firewall product, with a GPL (free for now) version and a number of commercial versions. It has a policy of making it difficult to change their setup for fear of screwing up the system. This is not a policy I subscribe to, but hey it's their product.... I have been using it for dial up and needed some help to switch it to adsl using pppoe. I joined the (moderated) mailing list. One message in the first day got my attention. It was from the product and list owner Richard Morrell. It was a reply to a poster who described how to add a kernel module for msn forwarding to clients behind the firewall. Mr Morrell's comment was: > I dont want to see crap like this on the mailing list people.. > Like I said if it happens again I will start removing people Being new to the list I emailed the list and Mr Morrell with a query as to why he took this attitude. > Sorry Richard I am new to this list, and I don't understand this reaction > from you. What was wrong with the post? Was it that the writer was adding > something to the system that you don't approve of? Can you clarify it for me > and the other list members please. The moderator (not Mr Morrell) blocked my message and very politely explained the policy of not encouraging users to muck around with the product. Fair enough. However Mr Morrell wrote back saying: > nope I dont need to, priviledge of rank oh and of owning the lists and the > whole project Well I was rather surprised and replied: > I have to say that this is the most arrogant piece of crap I have ever seen. I know >you are busy, and in fact Rebecca Ward answered my question ( I have issues about her >reasoning, but at least she is polite). You could have stayed quiet and I would have >been satisfied with her answer, but you chose to be rude and arrogant and your >reputation suffers accordingly. > > Perhaps you should join the qmail list and learn some more rudeness from that expert >of arrogance djb. To which Morrell replied: > go fuck yourself Now am I getting a little precious, or is this in fact the most amazing piece of crap from a person who has taken open-source tools and produced a popular product from which he now wants to make money? I am annoyed on three levels, (1) the difficulty of changing the system (but as i said thats their business), (2) the difficulty of getting help, and (3) the sheer rudeness of the product owner/developer. Needless to say I'll be removing smoothwall in favour of (probably ) clarkconnect asap. (only trouble is recent versions of clarkconnect require 32M RAM and the machine has 16M :-( I won't be using or recommending it again, and I hope others follow suit. -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
