Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I would be okay with no support (explicitly mentioned) vs no support where that's not implied to be the case.

    <rant>
There's nothing that sucks quite so bad as a link on a project page which says "Go here for help" - you do so, then find out you are in an IRC channel with 500 people, none of which ever speak, any questions are simply lost in the ether among the hundreds of join/quit messages per hour.

In other words, don't say you provide support if you don't intend on giving it. At least a message along the lines of:

    This is provided as is, where is, if it breaks you get to keep both parts
..forewarns me to either not waste my time, or be prepared to waste quite a bit of time.

As it stands, now I've wasted time, and now I hate your project for being an unsupported piece of shit, and now I hate the developers for fucking lying about it.

This is a literal experience I'm fighting with right now.

    </rant>
And worse, every time a user encounters this situation, it tars all of FOSS with the same brush. It's what leads to people joining companies and remembering their experience and telling people not to use X Y and Z due to that bad experience.


turn off the joins/parts/quits in your irc client(we use irc at work, and its the first thing i suggest to new employees)


It's not that I can't see the message anymore, it's that whoever might be able to help likely won't be able to see it.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: