[CentOS] Dogs, trolls, and neighborly free/open source

Thu Aug 5 18:02:51 UTC 2010
m.roth at 5-cent.us <m.roth at 5-cent.us>

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On 8/5/2010 12:25 PM, Paul Heinlein wrote:
>> On Thu, 5 Aug 2010, Les Mikesell wrote:
>>
>>> The part I have trouble understanding is that while it seems
>>> perfectly acceptable to be dumb about most coding languages and ask
>>> for a canned routine to do something you are too lazy to write for
>>> yourself, the same does not apply to shell commands even though
>>> there is not much inherent difference in complexity.  Is it just
>>> that coders are more willing to share their work than administrators
>>> even in cases where it is equally reusable?
>>
>> The major difference I've seen in that sort of request is that
>> coders tend to ask for help with a small subset of the
>> overall task (a routine) while erstwhile admins tend to ask for help
>> with the totality of the task.
>>
>> When someone says, "I'm writing a shell script, and hereabouts I need
>> $TOOL to do such and such," a good answer is usually forthcoming.
>>
>> When someone says, "Tell me how to script this $PROJECT," the
>> commmunity usually points the OP off to Google/Manual.
>
> I don't think it is the nature of the requests that are different
> (although coders perhaps have to know more to even ask a reasonable
> question), just the responses.   Coders seem much more likely to try to
> make their work available to others that haven't even asked while
> administrators pretend that everything they do is unique and not
> reusable - or they don't want it to be.

Mike, you seem to be misunderstanding - the lusers, like Hadi (sp?), are
asking us to do their work for them, not help them to learn what they need
to do it themselves.

       mark