On 4/21/11, John R. Dennison <jrd at gerdesas.com> wrote: > The only sentiment picked up on was that of a loud, minuscule and > irrelevant fraction of the user base from this and the -devel mailing > lists. He went with the loudest group of whiners he could find. Perhaps only a small handful keep "whining" about the situation. However, the same idea that 95% of CentOS users never post to the ML is also applicable to the complainer population. For every complainer, there are probably 9 other who feels the same way and/or may be deciding against the project without posting a single word. Bear also in mind that those who complain the loudest are usually the same people who promote the loudest. So they will have an indirect effect on the perception and popularity of a project vs another. The downward trends for CentOS on one of the charts that the dev posted as evidence of CentOS's popularity is a possible indication of the above two possible consequences of some of the rather unprofessional responses by the some of the devs. > By the way, anyone that makes a business decision on what OS to use to > support their business requirements based solely on the claims on a web > page has other problems; as does the management team that went along > with it. They might do so considering the kind of pseudo support environment that is available. Coming across some of the comments by the devs, without having the luxury of reading what's gone in the past 6 months, would give them a rather negative impression. This is why companies, even when they know they are in the right, seldom just tell the user to STFU or GTFO, at least not in such direct terms. > This begs the question: > Why are you still here? No, really. Why? I think your offer of writing a cheque may had given him and others extra incentive ;)