On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 12:36:39PM -0400, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 03:54:11AM -0400, Sean Davis wrote:
> >
> > Thus I see no reason why my response to him should be called "abusive" yet his
> > two responses to me shouldn't.
> 
> Well, let's see.  A good bit of it, from my point of view, is your overall
> attitude.  Matt isn't being paid for this -- contrary to your direct
> assertion, this is *not* his "job".  By wasting his time sending mail back
> and forth over a pullup for something so completely trivial, instead of
> batching it together with others as he usually does, he'd be doing you a
> favor.  Particularly since you could maintain said trivial change in your
> local source tree if it were that important to you that _your_ system print
> out something different; this isn't a binary-only operating system, after
> all!
> 

I have made the change in my local sources. What I don't understand is how
NetBSD developers will make batch commits correcting spelling and grammar,
but when I politely ask that someone correct a mistake in a kernel message,
I not only catch hell from the person who maintains the driver, but other
NetBSD developers as well. Whats the deal with that?

> Generally, when you want a favor from someone you _ask nicely_.  Not
> demand, not whine, not complain -- you ask.  Your original message sure
> didn't come across that way to me and there's really no question that any
> of your subsequent ones would, either.

I did not demand or whine for anything. I suggest you reread my original   
e-mail. ISTR it began with "Could someone please" which is hardly a demand.
Looks more like a question/request to me.

> Hint: telling developers in a volunteer project that doing what you want
> is their "job" is not likely to be effective.

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said doing what I want was his or
anyones "job". I was not asserting that he was getting paid for the work,
although you seem to want to twist my words to mean that. I merely meant that
he wrote the driver - the driver's comments say he "actively maintains" it -
therefore if anyone should be modifying it, it should be him, shouldn't it?
After all, when a problem is happening with a specific package in pkgsrc,
for example, are we not supposed to contact the MAINTAINER about it?

I never said it was his job. I said it wasn't mine. If I were a NetBSD
developer I would have made the appropriate correction in the ten seconds or
so it'd take and move on with my life, not flame the user who happened to
suggest it.

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