Re: [exim] Support Vacuum

On 06/11/2006 09:16, Peter Bowyer wrote:
> An interesting article on The Register over the weekend from Nick Kew
> of the Apache project discussing the 'support vacuum' created when OS
> distros 'mutilate' the standard configuration of an application....

Most interesting to me is the last part of the article:

<quote>
"A plea to Debian and Ubuntu: if you must repackage Apache in a
radically different manner, please document it properly! That includes,
along with the manual, a prominent notice to your users, that Apache and
third-party documentation and support describe something different, and
will not always be applicable!"
</quote>

Now as far as I can tell, and I'm no Debian or Ubuntu expert, that is
*exactly what Marc (and/or the rest of the Debian packaging team) has
(have) done*. And we *still* get relatively novice users taking no
notice whatsoever of the comments, notices, or documentation; they then
turn up here electronically and go away feeling put out, upset and
offended because we tell them (with varying levels of politeness) where
they really need to be.


Perhaps the problem isn't so much that trying to improve/change/mangle
default package configs is causing a problem, rather that there's a
[significant] proportion of any user base who simply refuse to take the
time to read the supporting documentation. Fiddling with the configs
just makes them that much more obvious.

Graeme