Re: Re: Please share your linux experiences....

[Atul Chitnis <achitnis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Mrinal Kalakrishnan wrote:

> And people most of the times get their questions answered - even if
> its only "refer the archives". It's not like no one takes part -
> some people ask questions, and others do answer it.

I am sorry - I disagree. Many people find that their questions are *not*
being answered. "Refer the archives" is a cop-out way of saying "we have
answered this question a zillion times, don't bother us with this",
because the archives are inpenetrable, have no clear pointers to valid
answers and the correct answer may have been given siz months back. Do you
seriously expect everyone to scan through the thousands of messages in the
LI archives trying to find an answer? Have you actually tried this?

> Then you should have done something about it, started off some project
> which would change the way LIH works. Something that would save the
> same people from answering the same questions, instead of just
> dropping out, because your dropping out doesn't help the LI community
> the least bit. You didn't make your point clear by just dropping out.

I wasn't making a point with my dropping out - I didn't even announce it.
I just had enough and unsubscribed. Most people in LIH didn't even notice,
so what's the problem here? 

As for "Then you should have done something about it, started off some
project which would change the way LIH works." - I tried that many times
over. You probably didn't notice. Bangalore IT.COM, Bang!inux, the
partitioning of the lists into logical topics, my work with
ILUG-Bangalore, my writing, the web site revamp, etc. were all part of
those efforts.

I had a project running (the PCQ Linux Initiative) long before Linux India
ever appeared on the horizon. There are close to a hundred extremely
useful articles at http://www.pcquest.com/linux) that address many of the
issues faced by people with Linux today - and unlike the LI archives, they
are neatly organised, focussed and someone looking for information will
easily find it there.

PCQ can do only so much (it is not a Linux magazine, after all), so I
wanted to be part of something that could provide a superset of
information to people, something that helped the spread of Linux. That's
why I joined LI, hoping to help make it something that more than just a
simple mailing list.

I can see this particular effort of mine failing, largely because the
people who could really make a difference, are too involved in "I am
right and you are wrong" wars that have no meaning. Frankly speaking, I
disagree with just about every point stated in the license wars. They are
in no way any better than distro wars, because the arguments are not
positive ("xxx is good because it allows this") but extremely negative
("yyy is bad because it prohibits this").

Can you blame for being bitter about this? I have been pointing people to
LI for a long time (no, this is *not* annecdotal - check any article of
mine), but how do you think I feel when I look at
http://lists.linux-india.org/archive/linux-india-help/200003 and look at
the replies column on the right, almost all of which show "0"?

And look at this list - it is scary! A small handful of people arguing
negatively about licenses or script-kiddie approaches! 

For once Nikhil posts something that makes sense in the context of this
list, and you, rather than contributing to an obviously useful thread,
argue with me about my intentions, but don't have even a line to spare to
the thread Nikhil started?

What sense does this make?

Atul

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Atul Chitnis       | achitnis@xxxxxxxxxxx (PGP:6011BCB8)
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