Re: Integration of new users

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

[I'm answering to the previous and current poster in this mail.]

   > I was just starting to reply to the post of ``Fraser'' on
   > bug-hurd. He, as many before him, offer his services to an almost
   > alarming extent: He offers to (re)learn to program in order to
   > help the project.

We cannot teach each and every person who asks for help, if you wish
to hack, you must learn yourself the bits and pieces.  We are to few,
and we have to little time for such things.  If we would teach each
person who wishes to learn to program, then we wouldn't have time to
hack on the Hurd; and that is why we are here.

   > This sort of postings are typically taken very inserious, and
   > sometimes even ignored completely. Beside the rudeness of such, I
   > can't imagine that we can't be used for anything.

It isn't rudeness, it is simply because we are voluenteers and we
decide how we wish to spend our time.  If you wish to dictate how we
should spend it, please pay whom ever you wish should reply to these
post (which have been answered a million times before); or teach
people how to program.

   > The non-native-hacker users are left in the complete dark, as far
   > as I can see it.

We can't see it, but since you see it, why don't you help these users
out of the dark instead of putting the burden on us who can't see it?
You seem to know what is missing, why don't you write documentation?
Why don't you update the user guide that is avaiable at
http://hurd.gnu.org?  Why don't you answer to these posts?

   > Hell, I don't even know how to file a bug report -- nor what to
   > report.

A bug report should have two parts, what went wrong, and what you
expect.  And you send such reports to bug-hurd@gnu.org, this
information is avaiable from each program when you pass the --help
switch.  This information is also available in the info page (just
type `info hurd' at your shell prompt), and on the Hurd project web
page (http://hurd.gnu.org).

   =2D The users of the premature GNU system are too much on their own

I do not understand.

   =2D There seems to be too little flow of information and help
   downwards

Downwards where?
   
   =2D No official documentation exist, nor any central entrypoints

The offical documentation is distributed with each program, and the
central entry point is the info program.


If any of you would like to make the GNU system more friendly for
"non-native-hackers", please subscribe to gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org,
and say what you consider crappy, hard to understand etc.  But note,
the GNU system isn't even usable for hardcore hackers at this stage,
but it should soon be usuable (as soon as I get round to building
everything, which should be soonish I hope).  But please read the
mailing list before posting. :-)

Hope this clarifies something.