Hi,

(This is a pre-canned answer, sorry if it sounds impersonal.)

You receive this text, or are pointed to this page because you sent me a private mail regarding Automake, a free software supported by public mailing lists. I'm afraid I will not answer your mail for the following reasons.

• I'm not the contact address for Automake. The public mailing lists are the contact addresses.
• I'm not the only person reading these mailing lists and answering questions. Sending your mail to the mailing lists will save me time. Think of it as some sort of load balancing.
• Mailing lists are publicly archived. Before posting you can search the archives in case somebody already asked your question; and when someone will answer yours, this answer will be available to other people as well. If I start to answer private mails I'll have to answer the same questions many times, and it will profit only to the recipient.
• I generally try not to answer publicly to private mails in order not to disclose one's email or views.

See also Russ Allbery's Why Ask Question in Public?

The primary mailing lists for Automake are

You do not need to subscribe to any mailing list before posting: these lists are open to anyone, including non-subscribers. However if you want to subscribe, follow the subscription instructions on the Automake home page.

The Automake home page also contains pointers to the mailing list archives, as well as pointers to the latest release of Automake, and to up-to-date documentation.

If you were sending me a patch, please start here.

Autoconf and Libtool questions should be directed to the appropriate mailing lists:

When posting to these public lists, please remember they are archived public lists, and are read by many people. So please choose the right mailing list and use a proper Subject-line so people can quickly decide whether they need to read your mail. When answering, please take your time to strip unnecessary quotes, follow the Netiquette and by all means avoid top-posting (this annoy most people on these lists, and it also makes your mail unnecessary complicated for blind readers).

Let me apologize again for not answering your mail. It does not mean that I disagree (or agree) with the contents of your mail. It just means that private mails are an annoyance to many people, and that it sounds more sensible to me to teach people how to behave (w.r.t. public projects) rather than wasting time coping with them silently.

Although I haven't answered your mail, feel free to answer this one. I welcome any kind of suggestions that can make the wording of this answer less rude and clearer.

-- Alexandre Duret-Lutz