*BSD News Article 46271


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From: larryr@saturn.sdsu.edu (Larry Riedel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs. FreeBSD
Date: 1 Jul 1995 09:19:50 GMT
Organization: San Diego State University
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Peter da Silva (peter@nmti.com) wrote:
> Larry Riedel <larryr@saturn.sdsu.edu> wrote:
> > > No, more to the point, if you were in that developer's shoes, what would
> > > you do?
>
> > Wait for a heads-up from someone else on the team that there is an
> > article in the newsgroup which I should look at, and then go read
> > it and maybe post a followup.
>
> Now then, where do we get this volunteer to send all the heads-ups?

Where do we get this volunteer to write the operating system? :)


> In the meantime, if you were in the developer's shoes, what would YOU do?

*I* would not be writing code if I was not going to be available to
provide technical support for it - to USENET directly when necessary,
and to the documentation and technical support groups (in whatever
incarnation they happened to be manifested).

So I would find the time to read the newsgroups and post when I thought I
had something important to contribute that no one else had yet; I would also
let other members of the team know if I saw an article that I thought they
ought to take a look at - as I would hope they would do for me.  I would do
these things because I think they are as critical to the project as writing
the software, and to me the success of the project is paramount.

Since I would expect most of the common questions and answers to either
be in a FAQ/HowTo or the archives, or to be answerable by one or more of
the users who have had similar experiences, I would not expect the load
on me of looking for and answering new questions to be very great, unless
I had just released some significant changes to the software, in which
case I would want to get feedback and cover my ass anyway. :)

I think that the FreeBSD development team and community on the whole do
an outstanding job of providing support to the users.  I also think that
it could be even better and it is getting better.


Larry