I saw a joke (but very true) that said: "how to start an argument on the internet: 1 - express an opinion, and 2 - wait"

...i mention this for a reason to do with this article. but let me first frame this a bit more.

My dad is a family doctor, in Australia we call them GPs (General Practitioners - just in case you call them something else where you are from)... and he has been involved in a government program or two relating to the medical field... one of which is getting prescriptions electronically sent securely from GP to Chemist, and there have been others. These are all pilot projects to see what is the best way of going about introducing a new system, and the doctors are rewarded for their involvement since it is likely to be a disturbance to a busy medical practice, where they are already run off their feet all day long.

Now, for those of you who are already reacting emotionally based on the idea that you believe doctors to be some kind of priviledged class of people... neither of my parents (both GPs) in their 70s, can afford to retire. My mother is out the door at 8am, and she doesnt get home from her surgery until 10pm - 3am the following morning, sleeps & then goes back again... because when they have finished seeing their patients, there is hours of paperwork to do... now, in my mothers case she works additional hours of this to desperately try to make up for her lost retirement savings from the GFC.

OK... so now you have seen the background to this... here is my question to you that really resolves ONE of the big mysteries about ANYONE (government or otherwise) taking up open source software: "why the f--- would these people expose themselves to the kind of abuse they will get for asking a simple question of a techie?" ...because let's face it, the internet & many techies have a notoriously bad reputation for being rude & abusive when people ask them questions.

This alone i think is one of the things holding back open source... with open source, you dont necessarily have a company who cares about their name in all transactions & interactions, so there is no accountability for behaviour... what needs to happen is for people within the community, while on the one hand allowing free & spirited debate, on the other hand coming down on senseless abuse where someone just asked a question.

As the saying goes, there are no stupid questions... and while I also believe "no generalization is true, not even this one" and so there probably are stupid questions... still... much like the rest of "user friendliness" that needs to be worked on (particularly those cryptic MAN pages), we need to have more friendliness TO users... stop expecting everyone to be an expert at I.T. ffs... my parents went through 10 years of combined medical school & residency just to become doctors, and now they have been in constant education ever since then to remain registered over the last (almost) 50 years!!! ...so perhaps they are a bit busy to find out & get used to finding out for themselves the stuff that you think is simple.

...and definitely STOP having a go at people when they dont google something for themselves... is it really so hard to just HELP people?