I tend to side with Gary and Mark on this one.
Guys, it’s ok to compete for work, even on an international basis. It is NOT
ok, however, to suck up a job on the basis of price, and then come to a
public watering hole where the gurus congregate and ask them how you go
about doing the job you took away from them ! There’s a sharp difference
between being a competitor and being a parasite. My immediate reaction is,
if you want our knowledge and experience, hire us at our price. If not,
please, at least be a honest competitor and look at us in the face, and stop
trying to get us to teach you our jobs so that you can underbid us and drive
us out of business.
On the other hand, I do not agree that NTDEV should be an experts-only
place. There should be a good amount of understanding and provision for
newbies, after all, none of us was born with the innate ability of writing
kernel code. It may be time for a FAQ.
I suggest that people who know what they’re doing might improve things a
little bit if they’d only answered questions above a certain level of
knowledge and experience. Scolding doesn’t help, what it takes is that
people learn that this is not a feeding place for scavengers. I know it’s
not easy, but it may be a good idea to only address a topic when it’s more
or less clear that the problem is an honest issue from a professional and
not a fishing-for-the-good-stuff probe from a scavenger. Any of us should
know how to separate the eagles from the vultures, right ? Even a baby eagle
can be easily separated from the vultures, so, how about using our good
senses to try to make this be a mailing list for eagles ?
And maybe PeterV has a point, if writing a driver is something that anyone
with a little bit of programming experience can pick up from the available
tidbits of source code and a little bit of ask-the-guru to fill up the
holes, maybe it’s time technology advances beyond that point ? Time for a
bit more innovation, maybe ? Stop that follow-the-leader thing ?
Alberto.
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Viscarola [mailto:xxxxx@osr.com]
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 11:09 AM
To: Windows System Software Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Re: Question on ISR
“Roddy, Mark” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
>
> I don’t think it is really ‘xenophobia’.
>
> Unskilled incompentent low-rent development organizations are underbidding
> competent experienced kernel developers on a regular basis. These some
> low-rent developers then turn around and use this list and the usenet
groups
> to get the experienced kernel developers they just underbid to rescue them
> from their deserved fate: project disaster.
>
I would suggest that if merely obtaining the answers to questions via the
internet can save a project from disaster, then it’s far easier to write a
driver than I ever thought, and those projects weren’t doomed in the first
place.
But this is far too big a question to debate here.
>
> It would be somewhat helpful if the Lyris search engine were more user
> friendly, if google coughed up ntdev messages on queries, and if there
were
> a decent maintained FAQ for kernel development that covered the endless
spew
> of bonehead clueless questions.
>
OSR will take action items to solve these three issues, but we’ll need some
help.
1) Over the next six months (maximum), we will make the Lyris search engine
MUCH more user friendly, no matter what it takes. We have tried to do this
many times, but we have been unsuccesful each time. We will, however, solve
this.
2) Over the same time period, we will ensure Google indexes the list.
3) We will IMMEDIATELY being a good kernel development FAQ, and put it on
OSR Online in the Getting Started section for access by all. We will credit
the members of this list in the by-line of the FAQ. We will credit the
individual engineer by name in the answer to any specific question.
We need the support of every member of this list to make ITEM 3 happen.
Every time you answer a question that should be in the FAQ, add “FOR FAQ” to
the title. If you have any items that you want to pass along to START the
FAQ, you may send them to xxxxx@osr.com right now. We will edit the FAQ,
make it available, and we will put a pointer to the FAQ at the end of every
NTDEV message.
Peter
OSR
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