OMG!
This is exactly what I have been feeling lately.
FYI, I'm a Linux consultant and my whole work is based on Googling, Mailing list, reading PDFs, and Internet forum like this.
The impression I've got after all this years working in the opensource community is this:
If it's simple and/or partial, SURE. There are tons of tutorial out there. Setting up
standalone PDC,
standalone Mail,
standalone LDAP, etc.
But, if things come to be a bit complex (read:
making money) such as
Zimbra + PDC + Replication + BDC, then the number of tutorial that can be found decreases significantly, the same to the number of people who is willing to share/help.
In an opensource project IRC channel, one of the channel senior member asked me this
"are you getting paid for all this research?" And when I said yes, he stopped answering any questions I asked in the channel.
Is it wrong if people making money out of opensource project? I know the developers have been working so hard, and I respect that. I even donated to some of opensource projects such as the BOT for IPCop out of my own pocket (not from company's money, FYI, I'm just an employee).
In my opinion, this is BAD SIGN. Either for the project itself or the opensource community as a whole.
Ubuntu community is the few remaining communities that is still very helpful and shareful.
Sorry for my rant.. I guess I'm getting too stressful in this
