At 11:04 AM 1/14/99 , Ben Laurie wrote:
>Frankly, I'd much rather have 10 minutes of pain figuring out how to
>configure that than hours trying to fix broken software trying to guess
>how my firewall works).
[-] E allows such configuration, but shouldn't require it.
We should do our best job writing software that "guesses", but when we know we're guessing, we should also provide configuration options so a knowledgeable person can tell the software what it wasn't able to figure out for itself. For most things we've been discussing having E figure out for itself, there are already (in the 0.8x draft) configuration options so you can tell it explicitly.
So the issue isn't between 10 minutes configuring (by a knowledgeable person) vs several hours repairing guessing software. It's between 0 minutes when the guesses worked vs the same 10 minutes configuring (by a knowledgeable person) when they didn't. Most customers who find they need to spend those 10 minutes are customers we've probably lost. Especially when the 10 minutes needed is someone else's time (the knowledgeable person's), and that person is busy.