TruckStuff

I'm fortunate enough to have a job where I am able to contribute to open-source software projects when I can justify the business need. Recently, I've been contributing to SquirrelMail (http://www.squirrelmail.org), <shameless plug>an open-source webmail IMAP client written in PHP.</shameless plug>

When I began contributing, I got listed as one of the developers of SM. One of the downsides of this is that uninformed people occasionally send emails to me (or other devs) directly requesting support rather than to one of the mailing lists setup for such requests. More often than not, these people send us email thinking we are there hosting company. Now, to re-iterate an earlier point: SquirrelMail is a FREE (as in beer) webmail CLIENT, not a server, not a hosting company. Its a client. Many ISPs choose to install SquirrelMail to give their clients webmail access. But these poor blokes don't know that, so we usually respond kindly explaining what SM is and telling them to contact their ISP.

However, yesterday I received the following email in my Inbox: Now for those of you who are not email admins, the problem is obviously that her ISP has imposed quotas on her account and she is overrunning those quotas, or the ISP is out of disk space. I'm not sure what it was about this email that grabbed my attention. But maybe it was one of the following:

1) She obviously made no attempt to look for answers with her ISP or by looking around on the squirrelmail.org site. But what else is new?

2) This company has an ISP, so they don't really *use* anything, they are *provided* with SquirrelMail by their ISP. For reading email. ONLY. OK, easy enough mistake.

3) I have no idea what she is refferring to when saying she only has "10 megs." The best I can figure is that she could be referring to a 10meg limit on attachment sizes? But that number only shows up when composing an email, so I don't know why she latched onto that number.

4) Perhaps it was Steph's particularly strong grasp of the English language: "How can I upgrade to higher megs??"

I was feeling particularly punchy, and after having a good laugh with some other devs, I decided to reply with the following: I figured that was the end of it since that is normally how these conversations end. But I got up this morning and had the following waiting for me in my inbox: I almost hurt myself when I hit the floor because I was laughing so hard. Now, just for clarification:

1) We are *still* not her ISP.
2) We *still* cannot do anything about her situation.
3) Squirrelmail is *still* free.
4) I do not have a "boss" @ SquirrelMail.
5) Even if I did, he would fall on my side because he gets a ton of requests like this every day.
6) She's a cheery lass, isn't she?

So again, I have a few laughs with some other devs at her expense. About this time, our project lead comes online:

Me: hey
Lead: Who is Steph?
M: lol, why?
L: let me send you the email she sent me and the other devs
M: ha, ok Lets just review the scoreboard at this point, mm-kay?

SquirrelMail is a FREE webmail client. Many developers spend many many hours of their free time contributing to the project out of the goodness of our hearts. We are willing to offer support through the proper channels (documented on our site).

Steph browses through our site long enough to find email addresses for developers (not looking for support). She randomly picks mine then emails the fine piece of prose originally posted. I tell her the solution, and she fires off a pissy reply because she doesn't like my answer. She then goes *back* to the SquirrelMail site, *still* not looking for support, gets the emails for *all* the other devs and fills them in on her cluelessness, further reiterating the fact that she thinks we are her email provider. *And* she wants me fired for a totally voluntary position! At this point, the project lead is just is ticked as I am that he now has to deal with this fool and so he replies to her: So there you have it: proof that no good dead goes unpunished. But at least I still have my job.

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The preceding statements are meant to be taken as a whole, in their entirety. They may not be quoted in part and then used to flame me. They also do not imply that I believe the exact opposite of their meaning. They do not make any implication about any group, race, ethnicity, age group, or other cohort beyond what is stated above. They do not make any implications at all. They have no "tone" or "attitude." They are words. Nothing more.

Kevster

That was an interesting read. I almost thought you or your Lead was 'Dogbert' there for a second.

It's nice to see you're still employed.

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For all the vital things I had to get and to reach.

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Jeffbx

Hahaha! That's awesome. Makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it - the thoughtful dedication & thanks from the user community!

yippiekiyeh

That's totally funny! I'm glad to see someone get the tables turned on them!

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Distributed.Net
I'm Trying this blogger thang...

TruckStuff

Help spread the word.

Memo

I upgraded you to more Diggs!

cadetevon

I went and dugg you as well.

Man, Truckstuff, this is brilliant. I sent it to a couple open source coders here at work. The both called me laughing.

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Yvonne
Funny: Okeefe - Giles 2012. The truth, told right.

CornMonkey

gladly dugg!

MikeD

Freakin' hilarious. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when she read that last email. I bet she was ready to blow her top...

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eSDee

In other words, don't eff with an open- source programmer Still, your first email was dick-ish. But since you don't get paid for it I guess you are entitled.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~
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3 days I dread to see arrive
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yesterday today and tomorrow

CornMonkey

hey congrats truckstuff! your story made digg's frontpage!

...and consequently, G|A gets slammed from the digg effect! haha.

InfiniteNothing

Oh yeah, feelin' the digg love. The good news is 3000K page views so far.

olapolednik

I can understand that the guy can be sick and tired of being a technical support and answering tones of questions over and over again. Maybe he could help himself out and tell people to go to Anslive (www.refwell.com/anslive) instead where they can get support for a reasonable price. That way everybody would be happy.

Builder

Maybe the topic of this post should have been 'The downsides of being a gloryseeking dick'. The post explicitly calls for the harassment of a user in the first few lines. Surely this is against this site's T.O.S?

Secondly, if you don't want to be contacted for support simply take your name and / or e-mail address off of the squirrelmail site. This is slightly harder than getting your link code in a forum post correct, but I'm sure that you can find someone to help you.

Free Software and Open Source developers with this kind of attitude, who have these hissy fits in public only hurt the goals of the community at large - you better believe that MS will be carrying copies of this rant into sales meetings, just like they did in the case of the Tuttle clown. To make matters worse, in the case of Tuttle, the CentOS guy had a valid complaint - he had tried to explain the situation to the user. You never even tried.

What a sad individual

chrissy

Builder, welcome to GA! Stick around we tend not to bite

Where on squirrlmail's support page for end users does it list the emails for direct assistance from the developers? While his reply to the user was short and maybe not so sweet, it was an answer and pointed her to the answer. She came back totally unprofessional and uncalled for.

TofuNinja

This was sweet. She got what she deserved. Perhaps she was the unlucky one to get the punishment, but you know, you can only go so far with people who are simple idiots before you snap. And his snap was not so bad.

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thresher

I saw the reads and the date and I thought - uhhhh, someone either got farked or dugg. Congrats!! And welcome everyone! Be sure and check out our front page for some killer bargains. (plug plug)

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Wait a second... you're telling me Sixpac Shakur is a CHICK?

Airencracken

Looks like the Digg flood is over, now I can access the site again.

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"I remember my first orgasm, I just wish someone was there to share it with me..."11-05-2003 05:33 AM - Topane
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Grafalgar

As "unprofessional" as she may have been, her response wasn't exactly uncalled for.

What you were dealing with was a computer/internet unsavvy user. When it comes to email, SquirrelMail is her first point of reference, so it does not seem odd to me that she emailed you (or anyone else on the dev team), even when it comes to issues relating to her ISP. Even if it is stated on the SquirrelMail website that it is a client, not a hosting service.

Usually developers understand the difference between computer literate/illitrate users and usually act accordingly. If an IT Director sent that email, then s/he should have been called a fool. If my grandma sent it, does that make her the biggest buffoon on the face of the planet? Because she doesn't happen to know what a "client" is?

This lady is obviously not internet/computer literate - she did not deserve your response. She also does not deserve the crazy spam/harassment that you're causing her by posting her name/email address.

You're also giving the other Open Source devs (especially those of SquirrelMail) a bad rep as customer insensitive and "punchy". Not good, even if you're volunteering your time.

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eSDee

Well said Graf. She doesn't deserve this much harassment.

ShawnLee

Wow, I wasn't even going to read this (not being a developer, let alone open source), but then I saw 19,000+ views. I see G|A?'s been dugg a little.

Still, while I totally feel for you TS, I think Graf and SD are a bit on the ball as well. While she (from her company bio, which was uber-easy to find) seems like she SHOULD know better, it's obvious she doesn't.

I almost feel an urge to send her an e-mail to tell her where she screwed up, but a) it'd probably look like taunting, and b) I'm almost positive that at least one of the other 19,000 people who read this already have.

Meh, funny story, we all got a laugh at her expense, but dude, I'd remove her last name and company info.

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TruckStuff

Sheesh! I was out all day yesterday and come home to this? Wow...

First, I want to apologize to G|A admins. I posted this on Digg b/c I thought some other developers (who know this type of situation all too well) might get a few chuckles out of it like I did. I never expected it to make the front page. So I'm sorry for the added load.

Second, I've removed the offender's email/company name because I was at the end of a bad week at work when I posted this and exercised poor judgement in doing so. Let this be a lesson to others: don't post emotionally!

Third, you can all stop emailing me because I'm not reading them. They are all going straight to my trash box. I stopped reading them when I got an offer to be in a rap video of all things.

Fourth, I've sent an apology to Steph for my initial reply due to the emotional nature of my reply: Now, to all of you who are calling me names: fair enough. But I want you to consider the fact that I (and other developers) get dozens of requests like this each week, some nicer than others, placing demands on our time. Usually the response is to simple delete or reply with a link to the help page. However, this time it wasn't (and I was wrong). This is not a justification for my initial reply, but what I want you to consider what it would be like to volunteer your time for a project that you really enjoy working on, only to have end users demand you do more than you already are. Again, that's not a justification, but a way of explanation.

LPMiller

dude, you do not have to say your sorry for sending extra traffic our way.

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Apex

LOL, I was wondering what the spike was. No apology necessary.

Second web server coming on line in couple days.

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Memo

Come on, most exciting thing to happen on these boards in a while

johnnymk

Nearly 21,000 views in a few days...WOW!!

Builder

You might want to go back and read some of them... specifically, someone advised you as the the criminal nature of your actions and your victim was Cc'd on that mail.

You posted in a public forum on the Internet calling for a person to be harassed and posted her contact details. You compounded this by then personally submitting the page calling for the harassment to at least one link aggregation site where even more people could/would view it. All this because this person e-mailed your address that they found on a public website!

Just to make things even worse, your contact details are prominently displayed on the 'About' page of the Squirrelmail site, and nowhere on that page does it say that you should not be contacted. This makes your attack even less warranted. You were free to ignore the e-mail or send a polite e-mail clarifying the situation. If you get so many of these requests, you should have a form letter to respond to them with.

Your original e-mails to the user were dumb and rude, but your consequent action was criminal in most countries with legal systems based on common law. This is what you and the other Squirrelmail admins who are currently supporting you should be focusing on. While you've edited your post here, it was viewed over 19,000 times before you removed her contact details. The original post will be archived somewhere, and you may even have landed G|A with issues should a subpoena for the original post be made. They will have to satisfy the authorities that edits and changes aren't tracked.

Today, Squirrelmail lost three SME sized sites. It will take us a couple of weeks to finish the UAT and migration process, but we won't use your product any more. I hope to move another 5 by the end of the year.

Prngr44

Well...she couldn't get too many emails right? 10 meg limit?

(I thought it was funny.)

And as far as the legalities are concerned with your legal beagle-ing, it lacks one major thing: intent. He didn't post this story with malicious intent or even asking for this chick to be harassed. While a poor judgement to include her email address, any savvy user who's hell bent on finding it out can. (and did.)

Builder

Actually, intent is the one thing that has pissed me off so much about this post and he very much did ask for this 'chick' to be harassed. His initial statement included the following text
However, yesterday I received the following email in my Inbox (email posted because this woman *needs* to be harrassed [sic]):

The post, including the request for this woman to be harassed was viewed over 19,000 times.

After stating 'this woman *needs* to be harassed, he then submitted the post to a link aggregation site, exposing it to even more viewers.

There have been libel cases lost on less.

Markel

I'm not a lawyer (nor do I pretend to be one on the internet), but if anything in the above exchanges sounds libelous to me, it's this: Emailing unknown contacts, trying to get someone fired from his job....

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