🚀 go-pugleaf

   Date: 18 Nov 92 11:16:09
   From: ejh@khonshu.colorado.edu (Edward J. Hartnett)

			     But it's just a crying shame to have all
   these free great packages that, with just a few minutes help from an
   expert, could be accessible, and not be able to use them. Am I the
   only one who feels this way?

The software may be free, but there's no free lunch.  Here's an
interesting quote from Cringely's Accidental Empires:

   "Typical WordPerfect customers make two [support] calls, averaging
    five minutes each, which means that when the founders of a
    five-person software start-up dream about selling 100,000 copies
    of their new application they are also dreaming (though usually
    they dont know it) spending at least 8.3 man-years on the
    telephone answering the same questions over and over again."

Now would you rather that the GNU team spend 10 man years (there must
be more than 100,000 emacs users out there) answering questions or
working on the GNU project?  

There ae very kind volenteers who maintain FAQs on various subjects
relevent to the GNU project -- those are time-consuming too!  Perhaps
you might like to become expert on one or another of the GNU tools,
and then becoming the "support desk" for that tool. That's what you're
asking someone to do -- you could help the GNU project by doing it
yourself!

(by the way, I don't cite the case of WordPerfect to justify
proprietary software.  In free software you only have to pay for
support (or distribution) if you use it -- it's unbundled!)