[PLUG] Finger Pointing

[John Jason Jordan]

On 16 Feb 2008 17:34:05 -0800
Russell Senior <seniorr at aracnet.com> dijo:

> Heh.  This reminds me of the feeling I had while doing my survey of
> MetroFi's network.  I kept thinking here I am, for no compensation,
> doing at great effort what would be one or two orders of magnitude
> easier for someone "on the inside", you know, someone with access to
> management interfaces and stuff.  Why isn't the jackass on the inside
> doing their job???

I recall <mumble> years ago having a problem with CorelDRAW on a
Windows NT computer. I was pretty sure the trouble lay in the driver
for the Matrox video card I was using. I called Matrox tech support
(800 number). The dude on the phone said he had available an NT
computer with CorelDRAW on it and asked if I could hold for a bit. I
said "sure," and he left to check things out. He came back a few
minutes later and said he had been able to replicate the problem. He
wasn't a programmer, but he assured me that if he could replicate the
problem he would be able to bump it to the programmers for resolution.
He took down my name and e-mail address and promised to get back to me
as soon as possible.

Two days later I received an e-mail from him telling me that he had
posted a new version of the driver in a special place on their website
and gave me the password to download it. He asked if I would be willing
to try it out. I did so, and it solved the problem completely. I
immediately e-mailed him back thanking him and verifying that the
problem was fixed. The next day the new driver was on their website as
the latest version with a note that it fixed a problem with CorelDRAW.

I'm certainly not saying that closed source is as good as open source
or that there are not huge advantages to open source. But I *am* saying
that we should not paint everyone with the same brush. There are lots
of good people in the closed source world and corporations are not all
run by evil people.