[BBLISA] Unhelpful responses (was Re: How would you address this?)

[Adam S. Moskowitz]

In response to a query from Michael Tiernan <michael.tiernan at gmail.com>,
Douglas Alan <nessus at mit.edu> and Josh Smith <irilyth at infersys.com>
wrote what I consider to be rather less-than-helpful responses. In fact,
I'd go so far as to call their responses unprofessional. I've taken
people to task for this sort of thing on the sage-members mailing list,
so I may as well be consistent and do it here.

First, Josh Smith <irilyth at infersys.com>:
> "You guys are screaming idiots. The depths of your stupidity are without
> bounds. You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field
> full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the
> clue mating dance. There should be a law against being as dumb as you are.
>
> This is not an insult."
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I beg to differ! In fact, it's not just insulting, it's rude and
disrespectful. Michael has a problem, one that will likely require
cooperation from the vendor to resolve; do you really think the vendor
is going to want to cooperate after such a response?

If you believe that the vendor's claim of "for security reasons" is
flawed, why not just say something like "I disagree with your
conclusion?" You can (and sometimes should) argue the wisdom of a design
decision 'til the cows come home, but the professional (as well as
polite) thing to do is address the decision itself and not the people
who made it.

Next, Douglas Alan <nessus at mit.edu>:

> "We've decided to go with the open source alternative."

I won't go so far as to charge unprofessionalism on this one, but it
still bears all the marks of a typical (bad) sysadmin response. First
and foremost, it doesn't answer the question the customer (in this case
that's Michael) asked. Second, it makes way too many assumptions about
the situation: Is there an open source alternative to the software in
question? How do you know? Does that open source package meet all the
requirements? Again, how do you know? Is there support available? Does
Michael's company have the resources necessary to support an open source
package? Is the alternative as reliable and stable as the package
Michael is using (or trying to use)? For all of these I ask (yet again),
how do you know? Third, I believe this shows a certain bigotry with
respect to choosing software packages.

    Yes, I know that "bigot" and "bigotry" are emotionally-
    charged words. For better or worse, they are the correct
    word here. Webster's defines bigot as "a person obstinately
    or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and
    prejudices."

It is my opinion that each and every one of us has a professional
obligation to consider *all* software packages in any given situation,
without regard to availability of source and without giving that one data
point higher value than all others. There are *many* factor that go into
deciding which software package is best for a given use in a given
situation. In more than a few cases no open source package exists for a
given purpose; in quite a few other cases, the quality of the closed
source package far exceeds that of its open source counterparts; in
nearly all cases the options for and/or levels of support available for
closed source packages is much, much better than those for open source
packages. To ignore these issues (and others) borders on (if not clearly
crosses the line into) negligence.

One last thing: Michael is "one of us"; he's our colleague, and he came
to us for help. We ought to treat our customers as good if not better
than we treat our colleagues, but treating our colleagues as poorly as
we treat our customers really irks me. Why? There's not supposed to be
an "us" and a "them," but if there has to be, well, why are you treating
Michael like he's one of "them?"

Your local curmudgeon,
AdamM