[turba] horde db shortcomings

[Marcus I. Ryan]

Quoting Lee Wiggers <lee.wiggers at americanelevatorinspection.com>:
> There are many lurkers out here waiting for the docs.  When you are
> arrogant enough to tell me to rtfm, you'd better be learning to WTFM
> or at least accept all the help you can get when offered.

I think it's time for a refresher in open source and reasonable expectations.
Open source is about community coming together to make something usable by
everyone.  With few exceptions, developers and contributers do so of their
own free will, on a volunteer basis.  We take time away from our families,
friends, and hobbies, outside of paid employment, to provide something back
with no rewards except for the use of the software and the good feelings and
appreciation of others we've helped; and being told that our efforts our
worth so much poop on the rug.

Now, that time we take away from work and family is spent doing as much as we
can with the project to do the most good.  A lot of that time is spent
reading and responding to email.  Every hour we spend responding to email is
an hour we could have spent writing new code, better docs, etc.  A great deal
of the email asks questions that are answered in the FAQ, the docs/* files,
the mailing list archives, or the hordedoc module.  When we get those, it is
much faster, and better for the project as a whole, though arguably not the
most convenient for the individual, for us to refer them to existing
documentation.

That said, some people, because of their attitudes, invite more than the
polite reference.  For instance, referring to hundreds of hours of effort to
make their lives better as "poop on the rug" does not usually invite polite
and apologetic responses.  The proper attitude is not one of supplication;
I'm not saying we need our butts kissed.  I'm referring to people who ask for
help by attacking the software and/or the programmers, directly or through
insinuation, or to a lesser extent people who give off an attitude of "I
haven't had to learn software X so far and I don't want to start now; I just
want to be told enough to get it working."

While many consider the latter to be perfectly reasonable, I would say that
expecting others to give of their free time to help you obligates you to
contribute of your own time as well.  When "software X" refers not to a Horde
product, but a backend product (mail server, database server, etc.), I see
even less obligation for us to provide documentation and training for it; we
don't have our own project well-enough documented for our liking without
focusing time and training on writing docs for other projects.  That does put
a larger burden on those who install the software and that's unfortunate, but
again, it's better for the community at large and the project, if not the
most convenient for some individuals.

It's also something we'd like to fix through good documentation, and several
have tried, but the flexibility of Horde means that documenting every step
for a given combination of software would result in hundreds of documents.
Even documenting every step for every database we can use means dozens to
hundreds, since we support any database that supports SQL through ODBC.

What would be great is if someone who liked to write and understood horde, or
knew how to ask the right questions, would contribute good documentation.  We
have several working documents in the hordedoc module (including one written
by me) but they are mostly specific to running one set of software (e.g. mine
is FreeBSD, Cyrus IMAP, PostgreSQL, SpamAssassin, Postfix, etc.).  That only
helps a very small group of people, though it at least helps some.  However,
a "full-time" documentation contributer would be spectacular.

Back to the point, the key is that Open Source survives on the generosity of
skilled people.  Programmers contribute code, writers contribute
documentation, and experienced users contribute their help on email lists.
People without any of these skills can contribute with money, or even just
the occassional email of appreciation to brighten the day of those who
contribute through other means.

If you need help understanding a concept, finding a solution, etc., asking is
always welcome.  However, because you have received a product for free, it is
reasonable that you be asked to aid in finding the answer/solution.  If  you
have done some research on your own, it helps to mention what research you've
done.  If nothing else, this avoids being referred back to documentation
you've read and still don't understand.  It especially helps if you explain
what was confusing, etc., about the docs so they can be improved for others.

Part of the problem is many people don't understand how to ask for help
without insulting the product or the programmers unnecessarily.  Others have
problems realizing that this isn't a business entity that survives on the
good graces of their customers; if we had no users we'd probably still do
this because we all run Horde on our own for our own projects, and because
it's fun (most of the time).  We could avoid a lot of the unpleasantness and
hassle just by keeping the product to ourselves.  We'd make the same money,
and probably have more free time.  People need to understand that when asking
for help.

So basically, the "lurkers" of YOUR breed (that is, those that only speak up
to criticize and insult) are actually good mostly for "ruining it for
others".  I've spent nearly 3 hours now composing this in as diplomatic and
reasonable tone as I could muster, trying to explain to you and the
population at large why things are the way they are.  More time was spent by
others.  All in all, I'd say this thread has easily cost the Horde project
10+ hours of development.  That's a new feature not implemented, several bugs
not fixed and/or documentation not written.

As to our arrogance and not accepting help when offered, I note through a
search of the mailing archives on MARC for "Lee Wiggers" that your only
contribution to any horde list is to call Horde so much "poop on the rug". I
see no contribution offered by you, let alone one not accepted, despite your
comment of "or at least accept all the help you can get when offered."
However, a MARC search for "committed thanks" shows, just this month so far
(2003-10-01 to 2003-11-01), there were 160 posts to the Horde mailing list
and 218 to the dev mailing list.  For ease of math, Let's assume 158 of those
(42%) are false hits, and that there were no other posts on any of the other
30-40 horde lists.  Since this is only 2003-10-22 that's 220 patches in 22
days, an average of nearly 10 contributions a day accepted and committed to
the CVS repository.  I'd say we're more than happy to accept patches.

All that said, Lee, I would guess your specific best contribution to the Horde
project might be to return to your silence.

--
Marcus I. Ryan, marcus at horde.org
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