When I was in high school I was one of the most popular guys. Oh wait, I wasn't! I was that shy and introverted guy. Now that I look back I wonder how quick people were to attach labels to others. So what do the geeks do? Join a geeky community. Enter the Free software communities, namely the FreeBSD users. Here you won't be judged by how cool you are (or think you are), your looks, or the amount of girls you get to sleep with. You'll be solely judged by the quality of your work. This is the place where your skills can make a difference, and where Joe Sixpack who was cool in high school would be considered a useless pariah. Why am I writing this, you may ask. Because a recent post by Brett Glass has reminded me how these communities work: The Meritocracy. It has somehow brought memories of how things used to be back then and how things work in the open source world today. I don't want to single Brett out, but he's a prime example of what you should not do. I've already told him, but I'll repeat it here: Wishful thinking will get you nowhere in the free software world. If you want something to happen you'll either have to do it yourself or shut up. Cue in the classic "Send patches or shut up". Brett has been using FreeBSD for years and somehow has failed to (or refuses to) grok this very simple concept. How does this connect with the high school story? I've seen this very interesting link in Lauri's weblog and I have to admit that sometimes it's very easy to give in to the dark side when dealing with these muggles of the computing world. And I'm as guilty as the next geek, but I have the impression that some people deserve it anyway :)

I've discovered today that PHP's mail() function doesn't like chroot, so I've installed mini_sendmail and voila!, another satisfied customer. Drupal's mail delivery is working fine now. You know, you can never be too paranoid about security.