NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/comp/unix/sysv386/13217

Internet Message Format | 1992-08-16 | 3.5 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!snark!esr
From: [e-mail] (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: The PC-UNIX Buyer's Guides --- Why I Won't Stop Editorializing
Message-ID: <1hSwPD#8Xxyw30ZVkRvBDkpTg53JPOx=[e-mail]>
Date: 16 Aug 92 22:25:48 GMT
Sender: [e-mail] (Eric S. Raymond)
Lines: 55

One thing I want everyone, friend or foe, to recognise, is that the Buyer's
Guides are one bleeding hell of a lot of work for little or no gain.

You doubt me?  Go ahead.  *You* try putting together 216K of dense technical
information and updating it *every month*, fielding hundreds of K in feedback
email to do so.  Now guess how many hours, on average, it requires out of my
working month --- and I'm pretty sure you'll guess low.

What do you suppose you'd pay for this information if it came in the form of
an `industry newsletter', assuming such a thing could be published at all?

Preparing the Guides has a few compensations.  None of them are received
hardware or software --- that's the Bake-Off, which I'll discuss separately.
One is what in SF fandom we call `egoboo' --- the frisson one feels when
(as in one recent example) a total stranger writes to say "you ought to be
nominated for sainthood, or at least free pizza".  It's a lot of fun to
serve the net, at least when it appreciates the service.  I get off on it.

(Funny thing, BTW: I have yet to recieve a hostile comment in email.  Overall,
the Guide's fans are numerous and use email, while the critics are few and post
news.  Might we suppose there's a lesson here?)

Another compensation --- the main one, for me --- is that the success of
something like the Guide creates a `bully pulpit' from which I can jawbone
vendors into doing good things and making desirable changes (and I make
no secret of my agenda --- it's all written out in the Guide).  Eric Raymond,
by himself, is just one more or less potential customer.  But the editor of the
Guide is something else.  To my certain knowledge, one of the major porting
houses has already been required *by Intel* to get its butt in gear and make
changes suggested in the FREE ADVICE TO VENDORS section.

(This is not why I started the original, unsplit Guide; I started it as simple
market research.  But it's the main reason I continue into issue 7.  Influence
like this can't just be grabbed and saved in a box; you have to accumulate and
maintain it over time, and you have to keep in faithful touch with the people
who have delegated it to you.  I work hard at that.)

Now: the people who rebuke me for editorializing --- including "insults" and
"garbage" --- either don't know or don't care that they're proposing that I
give up the job's major compensation.  I'm just plain not *interested* in posing
as the mythical neutral observer, guys.  You'll get my meat with the salt and
pepper of my opinions, or you won't get it at all.  I fulfill my obligation to
objectivity by clearly *marking* those opinions, in sections called REVIEWER'S
IMPRESSIONS and FREE ADVICE TO VENDORS.

And finally, *no one forces you to read my postings*.   I'll continue to accept
constructive criticism --- but if the best you can do is snipe at me for
stating opinions, to hell with you.

Plenty of other people feel differently, and express their support every month
by sending me information to include.  But more fundamentally, nobody pays me
for this labor, and I'm not ultimately obligated to please anyone with it but
myself.
--
                    Eric S. Raymond <[e-mail]>