Re: [LARTC] Dead Gateway Detection & BGP

[Grant Taylor <gtaylor@riverviewtech.net>]

On 8/27/2007 9:49 PM, Mohan Sundaram wrote:
> Such a service is a much needed complement to forums to aid adoption 
> of FOSS. I was doing this for a fairly long while as a knowhow 
> provider.

*nod*

> There is a very thin line one needs to walk. Forums being used to 
> vend services is frowned upon, rightly so. It is the concept of free 
> sharing that gets violated. Even when I was a consultant, I used to 
> offer complete advice to forums simply because it gave me 
> satisfaction. I'd learnt a lot from the forums and this was my way of 
> returning the coin.

Agreed.  Normally I do tend to offer up the complete solution, 
especially if said solution or one very similar can be found elsewhere 
on the net with a bit of Googleing.  However when the solution in 
question is that of something that was not readily available on the net 
and one that we spent a lot of time putting the puzzle pieces together 
we tend to hold on to some of it.

> There is a definite need and opportunity. Reasonable is dependent on 
> a lot of factors and the same service yields different values to 
> different customers.

Indeed.

> My philosophy: I think it is definitely possible to differentiate 
> between personal time and company time. It is like social work. If 
> you do something on your personal time that does not eat into your 
> co's biz, I believe it is good to do so free. Even if you did do it 
> such, so long as you do not charge for it, I believe it is not 
> unethical.

I'm not sure what you are trying to get at there.  I think you are 
saying that if you do it as a personal time, then you probably should 
find some other sort of personal gratification.  If you do it as company 
time then it is more understandable if it is charged for.  Am I any 
where close?

I can see how trolling a forum / news group looking for people asking 
questions and posting multiple follow up posts only saying "the company 
that I work for can provide you with a solution for X $s" is not so 
good.  However if you are an active member of a forum / news group and 
offer advice and pointers in the right direction to the solution of the 
question and state that "the company I work for can probably help 
provide a more complete solution contact me if you are interested" is a 
bit different?

I'm not trying to argue any thing here, just completely understand what 
you are saying and making sure that you understand what I'm saying 
(making sure that communications is happening both ways) while 
discussing this.

Thank you for taking time to reply to my post.



Grant. . . .
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