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The Free Software Foundation does not provide any technical support. Although we create software, we leave it to others to earn a living providing support. We see programmers as providing a service, much as doctors and lawyers now do; both medical and legal knowledge are freely redistributable entities for which the practitioners charge a distribution and service fee.
We maintain a list of people who offer support and other consulting
services, called the GNU Service Directory. It is in the file
`etc/SERVICE' in the GNU Emacs distribution, `SERVICE' in the
GCC distribution and `/pub/gnu/GNUinfo/SERVICE' on anonymous FTP host
prep.ai.mit.edu. Contact us if you would like a printed copy
or wish to be listed in it.
If you find a deficiency in any GNU software, we want to know. We have
many Internet mailing lists for bug reports, announcements and questions.
They are also gatewayed into USENET news as the gnu.* newsgroups.
You can request a list of the mailing lists from either
address on the front cover.
When we receive a bug report, we usually try to fix the problem. While our bug fixes may seem like individual assistance, they are not. Our task is so large that we must focus on that which helps the community as a whole; we do not have the resources to help individuals. We may send you a patch for a bug that helps us test the fix and ensure its quality. If your bug report does not evoke a solution from us, you may still get one from another user who reads our bug report mailing lists. Otherwise, use the Service Directory.
Please do not ask us to help you install software or figure out how to use it--but do tell us how an installation script does not work or where documentation is unclear.
If you have no Internet access, you can get mail and USENET news via UUCP. Contact a local UUCP site, or a commercial UUCP site such as:
UUNET Technologies, Inc. info@uunet.uu.net
3110 Fairview Park Drive - Suite 570 Phone: 1-800-4UUNET4
Falls Church, VA 22042 USA or (703) 204-8000
Fax: (703) 204-8001
A long list of commercial UUCP and Internet service providers is posted
periodically to USENET in the newsgroup news.announce.newusers
with `Subject: How to become a USENET site'.
When choosing a service provider, ask those you are considering how much they do to assist free software development, e.g. by contributing money to free software development projects or by writing free software improvements themselves for general use. By basing your decision partially on this factor, you can help encourage those who profit from free software to contribute to its growth.
Go to the previous, next chapter.