[nycbug-talk] thoughts, issues, and ideas.

[steve]

Hi all,

hope you had a safe commute, and a safe weekend. this weekend i thought 
allot about how to compose this email, and have yet to find a proper way 
to state whats on my mind. so please bear with me, and hear me out.


Last week i posted a question to this group regarding my configuration 
of php. i got a few great responses, and recommendations. i also posted 
  another question this past weekend about the question of stability of 
the apache 2 release, again i got some great responses. but i have some 
issues with this group that i would like to clarify, and that in my 
opinion can make this group better as a world respected tech resource, 
(if thats what we want).


i belong to various mailing lists, including but not limited to postfix, 
rt, apache, sunmanagers, nylug, and of course this one. from a technical 
prospective, sunmanagers is one of the worlds most respected mailing 
lists out there. postfix is pretty much up there too. the reason these 
two lists have such a highly respected view (and not only to me) is 
because they discuss technical issues related to the mailing list. on 
the sunmanagers list, if i were to post a question on how to set up 
apache on freebsd, i would be told that we do not answer such questions 
here, but i will get one and only one such email from the list 
moderator. on the other hand if i were to ask a question regarding 
anything that incorporates solaris Os, or Sun hardware, i would get the 
authorative answer from somebody on that list.

last week somebody on the postfix-users mailing list posted the 
following question
"Hi everybody!!!!!!
I need help to compile postfix under OpenBSD with SASL and MYSQL 
support.  Is anybody can help me???????"

the first answer that came through was as follows

"cd /usr/ports/mail/postfix/stable && env FLAVOR="sasl2 mysql" make 
install clean

That'll install 2.1.5 with MySQL and SASL support."

which is the perfect (in my opinion) answer to the question. nobody 
responded with google for postfix on openbsd, nor with www.openbsd.org. 
the question was a technical one and the answers were the same.


another list i belong to is the nylug, which in my opinion (and i hope i 
do not infuriate anybody here) is more of a meeting place for people 
that like, know about, admin, or otherwise are involved with linux in 
general. it is not a place that i would go to for in-depth technical 
questions, which is a shame, because there are some great minds there.


and now i come to this list. the nycbug general list. on the homepage of 
the nycbug there is not charter of organization, the closest i could 
find to a charter is the following "This is like-minded people getting 
together under a single interest." which to me means that nycbug is a 
group of people that as the nylug group are involved with the bsd 
variants in some way or another, and that this mailing list is more for 
discussions and is very open. which is fine with me (but who cares). and 
when i do try to bring up a technical question the responses are 
negligible, for the php question i think i got 4 responses and one was 
that i should asks the folks over at nyphp group. when i asked the 
apache question i also got 5 responses, yet only two answered my 
question. the other three, one told me to go elsewhere because they 
might better answer my question, the next one told me that openbsd froze 
their apache at 1.3.29 for license reasons. all i wanted was to start a 
discussion that would involve the members of this group, and i was 
looking for personal opinions, you the people of this group are 
technically astute, and most if not all have apache running in some 
form, why cant we just have a technical discussion where we point out 
what worked for us and what we recommend. i can (just as well as you) 
read all about apache on various pages, but the thing that makes this 
field, (meaning unix, bsd, and linux) different is that we share what we 
learned the hard way with one another.


  i would like to propose that we create a separate mailing list called 
bsdmanagers, and take the rules that are applied to the other purely 
technical mailing lists, namely only technically bsd related question 
are allowed. and if i ask a question about my php on bsd, i wont get 
told to go to a different group to ask that question. i would like to 
see the nycbug lists become world renowned for technical questions and 
answers for anything that involves the bsd world. and if you dont know 
or dont want ot answer then dont.


for those of you that read this all the way i thank you, and hope that i 
did not piss anybody off. i do not have anything against the nylug, or 
any other group out there. and yes i had a coffee today already, and 
slept pretty well last night, so this is not just a rant, it is a 
thought out and intentional email. i do not know if i have the right to 
do this but i am proposing that the membership votes on whether we can 
create a managers/technical mailing list.



PS. for those of you that want to respond to me please do so, there is 
no reason to rant to the whole list if you take offence to anything i said.

Thank you once again for your time,


Steve Rieger