I like to talk about SuSE's marketing, product strategy, competitive position, and the like. To be specific, I _like_ comparing SuSE to Red Hat, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, and whatever else is out there. I like to do it from a SuSE point of view, because that's what I've settled on. But I realize that the Linux market changes rapidly and significantly. (Witness Red Hat in the last 7 months.) I don't take for granted that I'll be running SuSE forever, and I want to be able to hear about other people's experiences with other software that SuSE doesn't include, AND other distros. Whenever these sorts of threads rear their heads on this list, people get apoplectic, and tell the posters to go to the OT list. Well, I did, for several months, and I found the list to be tiresomely immature. The list is made up of all the hard-core pro-SuSE folks that got told to take it elsewhere, and they wind up talking about... ANYthing. I guess some people will interpret "OT" that way, but I just expected "suse-ot" to still at least be *tangentially* related to... SuSE! What a concept! It seems that there is NO place for the discussions I want to have, and I think this is a disservice to the SuSE community. The Red Hat lists were fantastic. Many Red Hat people were active, and many more trolled. I see ckm all the time here, but he's apparently the SuSE liason for the list, because he's the only one (who at least posts from a suse.com account). The Red Hat folks weren't afraid of an honest look at the issues, and I think that's what made the list more effective. It kept the veterans around because they weren't getting bored with just a list of problems. I wish this list would grow up. It's a high-volume list. What's the harm in having a few more messages if someone wants to talk about Red Hat or Microsoft? But, no. Within a few posts, everyone is told to take it to the OT list. Unfortunately, the discussions of these sorts of topics on that list were of little value because no one espoused a different point of view. It was just cheering for the home team. There's also an inordinate amount of chatter that boils down to reposts of Slashdot and memepool. Unfortunately, my request to keep *that* list at least related to Linux, if not SuSE, was met with flames. So what's the bottom line here? Are the self-appointed moderators on this list telling me to talk about SuSE's strategy and positioning over on the Debian and Red Hat lists? Because there sure doesn't seem to be a worthwhile venue being offered by suse.com. Either some people need to "get over it" on this list, or we need, simply, ot@suse.com, and to split non-Linux traffic from the suse-ot list. Regards all, dk