“Children have more need of models than of critics.”
Carolyn Coats.
OSS covers a huge range of skills, activities, domains, business functions, etc. I’ve met some absolute geniuses in the field of OSS, but I’ve never met someone who is a genius at every aspect.
As such, I’d like to tweak Carolyn Coats’s comments thus, “OSS exponents have more need of models than of critics.”
It’s easy to be critical of those who have less knowledge than you do in a certain area. Chances are, they have more knowledge than you do in other areas of OSS. I’ve always found that environments of OSS knowledge sharing is far more conducive to gaining the breadth of coverage required than environments of brinkmanship.
In particular, vendors who are incredibly knowledgeable about their products and their ways of integration have to acknowledge that the customer holds all the knowledge power in terms of their organisation, network, people and processes. Vendors / integrators absolutely need to evolve their mode of operation to meet the customer environment.