[OT] Debian mailinglists

[Bart Silverstrim]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> 
>> Derek Broughton wrote:
>>
>>> Not everybody actually has the resources to _hire_ a sensible sysadmin -
>>> even as woefully underpaid as they usually are.  In a huge number of
>>> installations, the sysadmin is someone who has a basic technical
>>> knowledge, at best, and administers the system in addition to his regular
>>> job.
>> Are you saying that system administrators that work their butts off to
>> learn their profession should influence programmers to coddle those that
>> hire incompetent administrators because the business trying to "dabble"
>> in technology treats their technology infrastructure as a hobby and not
>> a resource that's important to their business needs?  Just clarifying.
> 
> Er, no, I don't think I was... 

Well, silly, that's why I was asking.

> I'm really saying that there are a whole lot
> of companies that won't pay for good administrators, and so they'll either
> have misconfigured systems or they'll stick with Windows, and most likely
> both.  

I suppose the application of Darwinian economics would say that if they 
can hold on to their position in the market with mediocre network 
configurations, then it's not as bad as it's made out. If it were bad, 
they'll disappear when they have a major system outage or lose important 
data. Or worse, customer data.

>As to whether anyone would actually "coddle" those companies, that's
> a matter of self-interest.  If it's worth it to the developers, they
> will...

Exactly :-) This is really a separate tangent from what I was previously 
discussing, though.