Mail Archives: cygwin/2001/06/27/16:49:26
Applause...
I've been quietly observing the arguments with some nervous feeling.
I now feel much better as being a part of this list.
-Tak
On Wed, 27 Jun 2001 16:16:30 -0400, Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com> wrote:
> I have been concerned by two recent messages where people have felt
> that their ideas have been "shouted down" or "shot down".
>
> That bothers me. It bothers me because I assume that most, if not
> all of the negative perception undoubtedly came from me.
>
> I do have some strong opinions on how some things should be done. For
> instance, I think that overloading a FAQ with excessive information is
> counter productive.
>
> I also feel that the majority of "newbie" requests here do not come from
> people who have exhaustively studied available documentation.
>
> So, filling the FAQ with non-frequently asked questions does not seem like
> the way to go to me. It seems like it will make the FAQ harder to navigate
> and will make it easier for people to miss things.
>
> Telling people that the way to use google is to type something like:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=cygwin+ssh&btnG=Google+Search
>
> does not make sense to me.
>
> Updating the documentation *does* make sense to me.
>
> Some recent email of mine may have made it sound like I am an inflexible
> bastard. I regret sending it.
>
> I'm open to new ideas but I sometimes need to be convinced. And, even
> when convinced, it does not necessarily follow that I will now make
> it my life's mission to carry out the new ideas.
>
> I've said that repetition is important, so I'll repeat it one more time:
> If you want to see something change, don't "suggest". Don't "it seems
> to me". Don't "It would be nice".
>
> Please reorient your thinking from "This is what they should do" to
> "This is what I can do".
>
> If I have dropped the ball on someone volunteering or if I have rudely
> shot down your offer to help then I sincerely apologize. I know that
> my attempts at humor have sometimes been interpreted as rudeness. I
> know that sometimes I get impatient with ignorance (you can ask my
> family about this trait), especially intractable ignorance.
>
> Regardless, I have no real excuse. I am sometimes exasperated and mean.
> I hope that it is clear that I am doing what I'm doing because I want to
> help. In some cases, I'm even doing things that I come close to
> detesting, like maintaining gcc or make. I do this because I know that
> it is important to people even though it is really not my specialty.
>
> And, I also enjoy running a project like Cygwin. I think that the net
> release of Cygwin has improved dramatically in the last couple of years.
> That is because I've lobbied for changes inside of Red Hat and solicited
> active maintainers outside of Red Hat. And, I've encouraged the
> development of the cygwin installer.
>
> There is still lots and lots and lots^10 of room for improvement. I
> would like to improve the documentation. I would really like to expand
> the cygwin test suite. There are still problems with cygwin signals
> and the cygwin spawn command. setup.exe could stand all sorts of
> improvement.
>
> I actually have a tendency to just see all of the negatives in cygwin.
> I have to keep reminding myself that people are using it successfully
> every day. Most of them don't care that zip stores full MS-DOS paths
> or that spawn(_P_NOWAIT) doesn't work on non-cygwin programs.
>
> Anyway, if someone has volunteered and I have dropped the ball, please
> ping me again. I'll try to rectify my mistake in not acting on your
> offer.
>
> If someone has suggested an idea and didn't appreciate my response,
> then I also apologize. I'll try to do better in the future.
>
> (Although, I will probably still try to be "humorous" from time to
> time. Be warned.)
>
> cgf
>
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