diablod3 and
chipx86:
Persistently
rude users are easily handled:
"
Please send a patch." Users of free software are
not worse than people at large; you now have more contact
with the people at large. You are learning about humanity,
or anyway westerners. The rude ones are not representative,
though. They self-select: polite or otherwise engaged
people only write if they have something to say, or to
offer.
Often what people say, anyway, isn't what they
think they're saying, and what they're really saying is
more useful. "Your program can't do X" might mean
"It's not very clear how to get your program to do X".
Telling them how, or telling them to zark off,
misses the point. Fixing the real problem helps a lot
more polite people (whom you don't know) than rude people.
Some of former wrote the software you depend on every day.
They deserve far more than you or I will ever achieve by
our little efforts. E.g. ...
The redoubtable Paolo Carlini is in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, for nine more days. He will be doing
free-software work for Suse starting next month.
Anybody willing to get together, or offer advice on
what he should take in? He favors Guinness and seafood.
I posted a screed on security & bug fixes, in response
to the Postfix hole, on LWN. It's the first-posted (:-) comment.
Saw "Dirty Pretty Things" last night with Paolo.
Recommended. Audrey Tautou has a much harder role
than in Amelie, and carries it off well.