[7840] in SIPB bug reports
Re: OLC should support pine
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Hawkinson)
Wed Sep 5 14:30:49 2001
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 14:30:39 -0400
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
To: Oliver Thomas <othomas@MIT.EDU>
Cc: bug-sipb@MIT.EDU, athena-rcc@MIT.EDU
Message-ID: <20010905143039.D1425@multics.mit.edu>
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In-Reply-To: <JIEDIMGOHPFHENGCGKHLGEEGDOAA.othomas@mit.edu>
Oliver Thomas <othomas@MIT.EDU> wrote on Wed, 5 Sep 2001
at 11:05:22 -0400 in <JIEDIMGOHPFHENGCGKHLGEEGDOAA.othomas@mit.edu>:
> given that pine is not currently supported by athena consulting, sending
> folks to sipb or suggesting a supported alternative if the customer wants
> help from athena consulting is appropriate.
I think everyone agrees that Athena Consulting knows how to forward
bug reports and questiosn to locker maintainers. But I don't think's
the question.
> however, this is separate from whether or not pine should be supported by
> athena consulting. there's a good case to be made that there should at least
> be limited support.
> athena consulting does not control its supported products list. we get our
> money from academic computing.
OK, I'm way confused. I guess I do not understand what it means to be
"supported by OLC," or what it means in this context.
I was under impression that OLC supported:
a) The formal Athena release
b) Anything that clearly refers to a single program for
which there is an olc topic ("topic -list"), e.g.
"framemaker", which is listed as "supported"
c) Anything for which there's an OLC answer.
Perhaps my impresison was incorrect.
In any case, though, what I meant by "supported," was that OLC would
try to answer the questions, though not guarantee anything (not that
the "supported" topics are guaranteed in any way, versus the
"unsupported" topics), and not send people away with, "No, sorry, pine
is not supported, we can't/won't help you." Not that this was said,
but I felt like it was what was being said in this morning's
conversation...
> in the ideal case academic computing would have a sound handle on
> the computing needs of athena users, and would tell us what we
> should support. in reality the process is much more convoluted, but
> any decision on changing the supported product lineup still needs
> input and approval from academic computing.
Really? I had no idea that OLC did not set it's own agenda for which
locker software is supported. It does not seem like the decision to support
pine needs to be made ore than one management level up.
> owls is an appropriate body to raise questions like this with. in the
> future, feel free to send suggestions on what applications should or should
> not be supported by IS to owls. i'll add pine support to our next agenda.
Well, I'm not going to take any further action here.
I think there is a problem if OLC isn't willing to support pine.
I have raised that problem to management's attention. If you are happy
with the current state, then so be it. I am not sufficiently motivated
to fight a battle for this particular issue, or to make
management chain escalations for it.
Thanks.
--jhawk
