[PLUG] Recap of Taylor/CentOS issue

[Geoffrey Burling]

On Sun, 2 Apr 2006, Lancashire, Pete wrote:

> now you know why uSoft has what over 85% of the market
>
> this is your very typical 'customer', what's even more
> scary is the same technical understanding exists at
> much larger gov't and corporations.
>
One thing that easily gets overlooked in this entire exchange 
was that Jerry Taylor fired off an email & got an immediate 
response from a senior member of the CentOS team. It would be 
as if you wrote to Microsoft to complain about a problem & 
got a personal response from Bill Gates himself.

Now, consider if you wrote to Microsoft to angrily complain about 
a problem on your computer -- not with MS Windows, but with 
how Quicken was installed -- & Gates replied with a scathing email 
caling you not only "stupid" but "fucking stupid" & that to 
expect him to help you with third-party he has no knowledge 
of & has no control over.

Oh wait, Gates already uses that kind of language with people, 
doesn't he? And I doubt he'd acknowledge a follow-up email either.
Now how did he get to be the richest man in the world again? 
Was it actually by offering quality customer service?

Two kinds of people will read this exchange: those who have been 
on one side or the either of a tech support call, & those who 
have not. Mr. Taylor was lucky he got *any* help, let alone 
the help he did get. I would have tossed his email address into 
my twit filter -- & maybe setup an autoreply message telling him 
to go away & autoDarwinize himself

Geoff