Evolution

[Adam Conrad]

Michael T. Richter wrote:
> 
> They'll often sneeringly help with the most trivial of problems ("how
> can I SSH somewhere without having to give a password each time") but
> they won't actually share the Deep Magic with mere peons.

It has little to do with "peons", and more to do with time, generally.
When I spot something on the -users list that I can quickly help with,
I'll hammer out a quick reply, and then get back to work.

Sharing "Deep Magic" is something that takes a great deal of time and
effort, and can't be quickly done in my 5 minute coffee break.  Any
"Deep Magic" I know has come from years of learning and mangling the
source of the operating systems I work on, and I often wonder why others
seem to think I should be able to impart this in a quick 10 minute
email, or even a 120 minute seminar.

When was the last time you asked a Microsoft employee how to rebootstrap
the entire system from a limited toolchain and the full source tree?
Yes, I get asked this *on a regular basis* by people who think it should
be trivial, and clearly I'm just "holding out".

Look the bottom line is that if it really *is* trivial, you can either
sort it yourself, or I can deliver the answer in 5 minutes.  If it's
*not* trivial, I'm not hording knowlege, I'm just not always available
to be everyone's personal guide to hacker fame and fortune.

I sometimes feel as though the (really awesome) free support provided by
free distributions and their user mailing lists leads to some pretty
crazy expectations by the supportee at times.  I'm not here to tutor
your CS degree, I'm here to help make sure that your user experience
doesn't suck with the software I invest time and effort in.

... Adam