Joe Buck wrote:
On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 03:13:21PM -0700, Stan Shebs wrote:
No, there have been plenty of complaints, but the GCC mailing lists have, shall we say, a "reputation", and a great many users will not post to them, either for fear of being ridiculed, or in the expection that they will not be heard. (Everything is archived, and they can see what happens to others.)
Oh, come on, Stan. Compared to what? The GCC lists are quite civil compared to many free software developer lists. I'd say criticism of proposals is harsher on the Linux kernel list (though most of that criticism is fair). And if you *really* want to see a hostile environment, try debian-devel.
Note that I said "fear of", which may very well be unwarranted, and "ridiculed" is not quite the word I wanted. Sometimes the critiquing of a user's message is factually accurate, but piled on, where GCCers point out all the faults in the poster's message, presumably on the offchance that one of those is relevant. But even though this may be the logical thing to do, the effect can be withering; more than a few times an angry user has bent my ear on how they felt belittled in the process. (My response was of course to make soothing sounds and sell them a Cygnus support contract. :-) )
Mind you, I'm not saying this is a wrong way to answer. I was just reacting to the fallacy that the lack of complaints means that everybody is happy; it can also mean that the unhappy people are not willing to speak up for some reason. (And I note that all of the hostile posts in this thread are now permanently archived and soon to be Google-indexed, for the future convenience of people considering whether they want to run that gauntlet themselves.)
Stan
