[tulip-bug] Support Issues

[Dana Lacoste]

Wow, this is getting to be almost as much fun as linux-kernel.

(what i mean by "fun" is akin to "listening to people yelling
at other people for no reason is fun" :)

I for one really respect the effort that Donald Becker has put
into the entire network side of the Linux kernel and think it
really shames us all, as users of this kernel, that people could
act in such a disrespectful manner to the people providing
this free software.

Maybe we need an FAQ on this whole manner, that everyone developing
Linux code can distribute :

"This is the home page for the Linux tulip ethernet driver.  This
page does not have any affiliation in any way with any Linux distribution.
If you are wondering about support for your distribution, you should
probably contact the people who that distribution, because I don't have
any control over their actions and that's what you'r paying them money
for :)"

M&M : This isn't about being professional or being experienced or
      complaining on a personal level or anything like that.  This
      is how the Linux operating system works :
      Linus manages kernel development.  He doesn't write anything else.
      Donald Becker manages ethernet drivers for Linus's kernel.  He
      provides these drivers for free to the world.

      Caldera/Red Hat/Mandrake/Suse/Corel and everyone take all of this
      free software and put it together into a single package, which
      they then sell to you, the customer.  Their whole business model
      is based on this activity, and Caldera in particular extends the
      business model to contractual support, i.e. you can buy support
      contracts from them for UNIX OS's.

      When Donald responded (in what you referred to as a 'whine') he
      was merely pointing out this fact : he gives away his product for
      free, and it is made to work correctly with the Linux kernel, as
      managed by Linux, and with gcc and glibc, when they are correctly
      installed.  Caldera doesn't do this correctly, giving you an
      incorrectly installed preprocessor and tells you to go bug Donald
      about it.  Note that there is no agreement between Caldera and Scyld
      to support Caldera's customers, so you're serial number doesn't
      mean anything to Donald (nor should it!) so he could just as easily
      (and justifiably!) tell you take a leap and ignore you, but instead
      he pointed out the error in the process and identified who caused
      the problem (Caldera) and pointed out that your whining was not
      justified in the context of this mailing list.

      I don't expect you to offer an apology, but I do feel that Donald
      deserves one: after giving so much to this community he should not
      have to put up with this kind of crap.

FYI : I make my own Linux distribution, and I follow these mailing lists
      because I know that any professional developer wants to know what's
      not going to work BEFORE it happens if at all possible :)

--
Dana Lacoste