Each person that helps, by responding on this list, is volunteering their time of their own personal volition. Personal time is precious, and should be respected. There is no automatic right to mine or anyone else’s time on this list.
Our time is prioritised for paying customers. Red Hat is not a foundation, we aren’t employed to service a free community. We personally chose to try and engage the community as much as time allows; often well into our personal time. We do this, not because we have to, or that our employment requires it, but because we are passionate about what we do.
Our time is prioritised for paying customers. Our subscription model ensures customers can ask questions under, time monitored, Service Level Agreements. All tracked and managed by a dedicated team.
Our time is prioritised for paying customers. Our subscription model ensures we work first on bugs reported by customers. Our time is limited, and while all bugs are important, some bugs are more important than others. In general runtime issues have our highest priority; for instance I’m sure many people here would rather we prioritise a memory leak over a UI limitation in the Rete viewer, or that we ensure the OSGi Karaf container works.
If you require this level of service, then I can have someone from sales contact you with regards to purchasing a subscription. You will then receive our full and undivided attention.
The community forum is provided as a focal point for the community to talk among itself, to explore and share ideas and to help each other. When we can and we have time, Red Hat core developers, try and engage with the community. This is not a requirement of our employment. Like many others on this list, we do it anyway because we are passionate about what we do.
Even if it was possible to stretch our limited time further, If we provided that level of service in the community, then what would be the value of a subscription for our paying customers? How would Red Hat, without customers, employ my team and I?
Open Source is not about “free stuff”, it’s about enabling and empowering people, and communities. You are not beholden to a propriaraty company, who may or may not chose to fix things. You are empowered, and actively supported, to become part of the developer community and fix these things yourself. Enabling, sharing and doing things together, is what Open Source is about.
At some point I hope you look back on this post, and feel some degree of embarrassment.
PS You can atone for your sins by submitted a pull request for a Rete viewer fix.
Project vs Product explanation:
"We saw this message..." - then why wasn't the advice given to raise a bug
earlier? Why did it take 8 posts to eventually get to that point? It's a
waste of time and effort, and a lack of appreciation for people who are
trying to promote your product in their industry and workplace.
Your other point about the Rete Viewer being low priority. For developers
who are new to Drools (like me), one of the assurances we get that our rules
are properly defined is the Rete viewer. If the Rete Viewer shows errors,
then it gives doubts about whether the rules are properly defined. In my
case, the rules still function correctly but if I am going take my rule
engine into a Production environment I want all the assurances I can get.
Thank you for eventually replying to my post.