Re: 2.3.43, and a variety of problems.

[Brandon Hume <hume-ol@bofh.ca>]

On Fri, 2009-09-18 at 07:33 -0400, Francis Swasey wrote:
> This is getting ridiculous from my perspective.  We've had a rash of people reporting problems 
> against older releases and being effectively told to go to hell (which is what we hear when the 
> development team or some proxy for them tells us to upgrade to 2.4).

"The fix is in 2.4 but can't be backported" is certainly a valid answer,
and one I can live with.  I'm not married to 2.3, and I think syncrepl
is the best thing since copulation.

However, part of the reason I'm so slow moving to 2.4 is because I'm
pretty much the only person here running this large LDAP directory.  And
part of the reason I'm the only person running the show, in addition to
my other tasks, is because my coworkers and technical friends look at
the openldap-software mailing list and say "I don't want to deal with
those people".  (Some of these people have worked with Theo de Raat...)

I realize that users ask stupid questions and run ancient versions, but
I also realize that sometimes those users are experiencing a catastrophe
and have eighty thousand users banging on the door demanding explanation
(ie: me).  In that kind of situation people miss parts as they review
docs and conflate symptoms and frequently make things worse before they
make it better... and, yes, ask stupid questions.

Part of the reason I'm slow moving to 2.4 is because I actually had to
work myself up to asking my syncrepl-client question.  I braced myself
for one-word answers, "RTFM"-type answers, and variations on "why in the
world are you doing something like that?"  I got lucky, my question was
apparently worthwhile, and I got useful information along with tangible
relief.  But what does that say about the environment?

When I come across technical posts, when someone decides to share their
knowledge, it's a delight.  But there's never any doubt when some of
those people think you're wasting their time.

I can handle being told that my version is too old and is unsupported.
I just wish we could scale back a bit on the contempt while being told.