On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 5:11 PM, Ron Blizzard rb4centos@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Brian Mathis
These kind of ass-kissing posts are even worse than the flame wars. The flame wars at least usually start with some sort of reasonable criticism of the project, and have the *potential* to result in a discussion that ultimately improves the project. Ass kissing never has the potential to improve the project.
Flame wars only start once Johnny or some sycophant tells everyone to fuck off, thereby derailing any potential for a constructive discussion. At that point you're left with lots of very smart, very angry people who feel like they wasted their time promoting and using CentOS.
Give me a break. Any human being, who's been working his ass off for nearly seven months to get out three separate releases of CentOS, would lose patience when all that comes from the sidelines is the constant drip, drip, drip of unending whining from a few repeat-o-matic cranks. I've basically ignored this mailing list for months because of it -- and have just recently come back to read it, and I'm already fed up with it. How the developers have put up with it for months, I have no idea.
And, as for "ass-kissing" (as you so politely put it), I use and *like* CentOS and am grateful for all the work the developers put into it. And, especially since the ungrateful whiners can only bitch and bitch and bitch, I think every now and then the developers need to hear that there are those who appreciate their work.
As I've told Les, if you know so much better how to do this, why don't you rebuild your own Red Hat distribution? So much easier to "do it" when you're not actually "doing it," isn't it?
-- RonB -- Using CentOS 5.6
The constant "drip drip drip", as you put it, is generated from the disrespect shown to the users, not the other way around. Anyone who asks how much longer or how they can help is immediately slapped down and told to go away.
The understanding that's missing from the Devs and sycophants is that users are asking BECAUSE THEY CARE. BECAUSE THEY LIKE THE PROJECT. BECAUSE THEY UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A LOT OF WORK. And their concern is met with nothing but derision and accusations of being constant freeloading whiners.
As for appreciating the developers, that is what all of the posts complaining about the process are about. People complain they can't help. People complain they can't do anything. People complain that when they ask, they are shut out instead of welcomed in. All of this comes from a desire to help the project.
The sycophants simply unable to have any real discussion. Those with criticisms have valid ones, but the responses do not actually address the problems -- they just ignite the flames. Anyone making personal attacks like calling people whiners or crybabies are really the ones causing the problem here, because there is no hope of ever making those constructive.
While the "whiners" my not have done anything to help, what have the "supporters" done? Any one of them could start digging in to the available and possibly back-channel information to have something to supply other than calling people names. Surely working to get that information out to users would stop these constant email chains more constructively than the name-calling? So I guess anyone not doing that is also a freeloading leech?
// Brian Mathis