[OT] RE: change in behavior of make from 3.80 to 3.81

["Dave Korn" <dave.korn@artimi.com>]

On 14 August 2006 23:18, Joachim Achtzehnter wrote:

[  Thread properly TITTTL'd.  Bock-bock-bock-baaaaaaawwwk!  ]

> Dave Korn wrote:
> 
>> Every single day for the past month, we have had at least
>> seventy-four[*] identical duplicate redundant reports of this...
> 
> Have you considered that there just might be a significant message hidden
> in this from your user community?

  It's *my* user community?  Wow!  Does that mean I can take them home and
hang them on the wall?

  However, to answer your question: no.  Since every single one of those posts
presented itself as "wow, look what I just discovered, what's happening?", and
not a single one began with "Even though dos paths are no longer supported
here's a reason why I think they should stay", I don't think you can
reasonably infer a message from that, except that either an awful lot of
people are not in posession of even the most elementary search skills, or that
there are an awful lot of people who are so passive-consumption oriented that
the thought of trying to look up some information doesn't even occur to them
and their first thought is "Get someone else to tell me what to do".  Or both.

>  As somebody who was involved in one of
> these earlier threads, let me also mention that to every one of these
> seventy-four[*] reports you see on the mailing list there is another user
> who expresses his annoyance with these changes in private emails, having
> given up on posting such things because of the hostile reaction one gets
> these days for expressing views about requirements that certain people here
> don't like.

  Ah, the classic old the-lurkers-support-me-in-email argument.  As used by
usenet cranks since 1994 to justify posting the same whinge on the topic of
"how everyone should do things the way I say they should because it's just
obviously right" over and over again, on the grounds that they're only saying
it once for themselves, and otherwise speaking up for all the poor little
people who are too shy and timid to speak for themselves.  Wow, you complete
knight in white shining armour, you, you champion of the people.

  Or not.  You may or may not have had conversations in private mail, but that
doesn't make you some kind of democratic representative.  Get elected, then
we'll talk about what your constituency wants.

> If this implies that Cygwin maintainers generally "just don't care" about
> their users anymore perhaps those users will have to band together some day
> and consider creating a Cygwin fork...

  No, that implies you are fraudulently projecting a single case and assuming
it represents an entire set of people in an attempt to construct a specious
argument.

  As I pointed out initially, I am not the make maintainer, nor a redhat
employee, nor a cygwin project member.  I'm here of my own accord, to get help
with my cygwin problems, help other people solve theirs, post the odd bugfix,
and so on, and I have no responsibility or duty of care toward *you*, and am
fully entitled to get bored with people posting the exact same posts over and
over and over and over again.


    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....