The Local Source Oracle

• Since the other programmers were not used to working with FOSS tools, I served as the local oracle.
• When one of the programmers ran into a problem with one of our FOSS tools, I started reading the source-code and supply the answer.
• This could take anywhere between 5 minutes to 2 days.
• Which means that overall, the support level they got was quite better then the support they got from companies with good support.
• One of them kept whining about this situation - apparently, being dependent on people you know is harder then being dependent on people you only talked to via the phone (or via e-mail).
• It is the same reason why programmers never trust the software their own company creates - it's easier to trust a life-support system when you are not aware of the bugs that QA found and were not fixed...

Originally written by guy keren