Commercial organization suckage wrt Samba

[Steve Litt]

Richard,

I think some people are just like that. I've noticed it from the time I was
an audio repair tech and people wanted a free diagnosis so they could get
the repair done for the price of a transistor. At Troubleshooters.Com I
sometimes get people who want me to debug their 300 line Perl program or
design a database for no money. I quote an hourly figure. Most of them
slink away into the night, and the rest become clients :-)

You do good work. I read Learn Samba in 24 Hours, cover to cover. You (and
the rest of the Samba crew) are exactly the type of person I'd come to if I
needed expert work and was willing to pay for it.

Steve Litt


At 11:29 AM 12/17/1999 +1100, Richard Sharpe wrote:
>Hmmm, 
>
>Luke referred to commercial organizations sucking off of the Samba effort
>and giving nothing in return.
>
>I have been contacted by various people over the last twelve months.  Said
>people have all been trying to implement various forms of SMB server,
>mostly for embedding in printers.
>
>None of them have come bearing gifts, and seemed to simply want to suck off
>of the effort I have put into learning about the SMB protocol and the Samba
>source code.  None have offered pizzas, tools, knowledge, etc, in return,
>at least not to my knowledge.
>
>This last one seems to take the cake.
>
>It would seem that Texas Instruments, if that who ti.com is, is wanting to
>build an SMB capable printer.  They seem to have subcontracted the work to
>their Indian Development Branch.
>
>I got an EM from a very imperious fellow who want to know all sorts of
>things.  I was busy at the time giving courses and working on more decoding
>of the SMB protocol in Ethereal, so I did not reply. 
>
>A few days later, I got an even more imperious message from this fellow
>saying that he was waiting for my reply.  I refrained from sending back
>that I was waiting for some money, and pointed out that the info he needed
>was in Ethereal and Samba, and, but for the want of a clue (converting HEX
>to Decimal), he would have stumbled over it :-)  I did however object to
>being asked to do, for no recompense, the work he was being paid for.
>
>It seems that this fellow was non-plussed, and today I got an EM from one
>of his compatriots in the US.  This EM was much more pleasantly
>constructed, but still asking for the same info, and likewise, sans gifts :-(
>
>I provided more clues.
>
>However, it would appear that the world is full of people who want others
>to do their work for them.
>
>So endeth my gripe for the day.
>
>Regards
>-------
>Richard Sharpe, sharpe at ns.aus.com, Master Linux Administrator :-),
>Samba (Team member, www.samba.org), Ethereal (Team member, www.zing.org)
>Co-author, SAMS Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours
>Author: First Australian 5-day, intensive, hands-on Linux SysAdmin course
>
>