On Fri, 17 Sep 2010, Les Mikesell wrote:
Agreed that it's good to know how - but 'there isn't any rpm' should really mean there isn't any rpm at any well-maintained location, not just in the base system or that you didn't bother to look. Every time you build something yourself you are taking on the job of maintaining it forever and probably leaving people in a lurch when you leave and someone else has to figure out what non-standard things you did.
I think you overstate the matter with a strawman that lacks mutuality of obligation ...
If a person (person X) is employed at site Y, and the folks responsible for that site Y are willing to pay person X forever to maintain content forever, perhaps there is a 'leave in the lurch' situation
If site Y was willing to pay for documentation to be produced as to how the site was installed, and how it might thereafter be maintained going forward, it is no longer: 'non-standard'
But, if site Y was not willing to open their purse, it sure seems to me that one cannot fairly somehow hold person X accountable with the 'guilting' as to: 'leave in the lurch' for entropy and the absence of knowledge of site Y on how to address it without person X
Site Y gets the union of: what a commons community will freely offer, whatever deliverables one has paid for, and what one is then willing a subsequent maintainer to pay for when/if entropy happens
but this thread has wandered far, far afield
-- Russ herrold