I'll be on holiday when 2.0 come out 8-(
Ulrich
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[Nothing technical about the Linux Kernel]
I've just unsubscribed from the Linux Kernel list, which I was
following since Linux 1.2. I unsubscribed, because I'll be on holiday
for the next three weeks. You still can send messages to my mailbox,
but I can't handle several thousand messages once I'm back.
At this point I'd like to make a few personal statements about this
list and the people in this list.
First of all, I myself subscribed to this list to learn about new
development in the kernel as well as to report and fix some bugs. I'm
not a real kernel developer, but just a user with interest in details.
As it seems, most readers of this list are "pure readers", people who
expect to get valuable information about the kernel. Of course I can't
judge over those people that I've never heard about, but interestingly
there are several people in that list who felt attacked by some messages
of the more active members of the list. I'm speaking about my own
messages in particular.
Also surprising is the fact that all the people that flamed and
insulted me because of some of my not-too-technical, or inexact
messages were Germans (including Austrians as German speaking people).
As said before these people also were not involved in mainstream
kernel development, but only "readers". Maybe this is what has been
frequently criticized in connection with the "Commercial Internet":
Companies are charging money for the access to the Internet, but the
customers expect to find only valuable, correct and useful information
wherever they look into.
I myself see this as a marketplace for communication; of course you'll
get told if you just said some nonsense, but fortunately most of that
"nonsense" was neither intended nor because of lack of knowledge. It's
just because you don't think enough before or while typing
sometimes. Now the more clever participants in the list could argue
that such people like me should shut up, but maybe if the learn from
their mistakes, they can be useful some day (after having made enough
mistakes).
Fortunately the "true makers" in this list have a much better sense of
humour than the average reader.
Also interesting was the fact that some people not visible connected
with "small-soft" felt they had to defend that company from any of my
evil words said about it. Please accept my excuses if someone felt
personally attacked, just because he or she works for "small-soft"
(often also called mega-dollar, or just M$). As I have to use these
products, usually I know how suitable they are in the real world of
business.
Another interesting fact is what all the people adding to this list
indirectly tell about themselves. You learn a lot about all these
people you've never met (Maybe it's just because I've also studied
psychology in addition to computer science). But there's also a
danger: You never know what someone is writing outside this list. So
before, someone tells me that all my messages were completely useless,
or that I misspelled a word, he/she should try to find out what I'm
really doing. Nevertheless I admit that some of my messages were
rather uninteresting to most of the readers in this list.
I'm not working mainly with Linux, but I strongly support the idea of
a high-quality, free operating system, that also is easy to
use. Possibly I'm just a bug reporter, but I know what I don't know.
Ulrich Windl
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