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

[pete wright]

On Jan 24, 2005, at 7:06 AM, steve wrote:

> Hi all,
>
<snip>
> 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.
>

Personally I think that's actually the worst solution you can give to 
someone who is obviously starting out with *any* OS.  Now sometimes 
responses can be harsh "RTFM!" but just telling people to blindly 
execute commnads w/o pushing them to solve problems themselves is not 
good.  Esp. with OBSD.  One of the things that set's BSd apart from 
most other OS's is the ease with which one is able to solve a problem 
on their own, meaning the documentation is Top Notch and well organized 
%95 of the time.

>
<snip>

> 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 thought the reply's were pretty spot on, honestly it would probably 
not be a good thing to come out and say "Yes use apache 2" with out 
knowing your specific environment you are going to be working in.  Heck 
michael even pointed you a page he wrote up to assist people with 
setting up apache.  I also think the licensing issue is very important, 
esp. in regards to free software.  because the code is ours we should 
be concerned when a change is made and talk about it.


-p


~o0OO0o~
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
www.nomadlogic.org
freenode.net: nomadlogic_