On 12/01/11 02:28, John Tate wrote:
I think I've found a bug in the OpenBSD crowd. They bug the hell out of me
and my little mistakes.
I am not talking about people who actually have a solution, but I can't
seem to ask anything on this list without parrots coming along picking on
me. I think some people just hang out here because it's the most anal bunch
of hackers ever, in recorded history. What are your experiences?
Is it true that occasionally we attract people who either love bullying or
are just lazy and pretending to be one of the clever?
It just figures some of these people sit on the list, and email you poorly
researched crap with no answers contain.
If you hate a question, it truly doesn't belong, bug me.
But if you just can't answer a question, ignore it.
John Tate.
Note: Yes, it's not my list.
What a huge number of people coming to OpenBSD don't get
is the very very different culture here, as compared to the Linux
world. I briefly subscribed to some Linux lists several years ago,
but dropped them when bombarded with completely undecipherable
pleas for help, which usually described nothing relevant but sounded
like a bad political bad in its intensity.
Newcomers are expected to *read* the documentation and try things,
try things several times before asking for help. Squealing for help
returns comments of equal usefulness, and possibly comic relief for
some people.
That the BSD world comes from an academic history shows in terms
of the documentation that all the BSDs have, and Linux belies a more
active development culture, larger, at the cost of thinking things out,
and definitely placing less importance on documentation. It's like oil
and water.
So it isn't a bug in the OpenBSD crowd, as much as the expectation
that people will work on their problems before asking, and to state
clearly what the problem is.
--STeve Andre'
