[joezydeco]

Unfortunately, a lot of these kernel developers have day jobs.

I was recently working with a particular hardware module from a certain company. Their lead technical support person was also helping develop the ARM side of the kernel and merge their drivers into the tree.

The awful technical interactions and pretty much the complete lack of patience and empathy for a customer, made the whole thing a nightmare. Eventually I lobbied, and got, our company to drop them as a vendor and move to a competitor. That one developer created -$1,000,000 in annual revenue for the vendor.

I still don't think they realize what happened.

[meapix]

> I still don't think they realize what happened.

Basically your goal was to punish not to correct?

[joezydeco]

Yes, absolutely.

Since this was the business model this company deemed acceptable, I figured it was completely acceptable to do it in return. When all you receive to your questions is "RTFM, idiot", that's a punishment in my opinion...not a correction. And I'm the one holding the million dollar purchase order in my hand.

I could not (and would not) waste development time trying to reeducate this person into being a better customer support person. That's not my job - it's theirs. Sometimes you need to whack someone on the head with a 2x4 before they get the message.

[danielvf]

It sounds like his goal was to be able to have a helpful support person to call.

(Attempting to correct from the outside, the flaws of vendor bureaucracies seldom goes well.)