Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 21:12:56 +0300 From: Panagiotis Astithas <past@netmode.ntua.gr> To: Bill Huey <billh@gnuppy.monkey.org> Cc: Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>, java@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: JDK2 binary update Message-ID: <20010407211256.A41705@netmode.ece.ntua.gr> In-Reply-To: <20010405055053.A6429@gnuppy>; from billh@gnuppy.monkey.org on Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 05:50:53AM -0700 References: <15039.53869.503026.885294@nomad.yogotech.com> <20010405150313.A7385@netmode.ece.ntua.gr> <20010405055053.A6429@gnuppy>
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On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 05:50:53AM -0700, Bill Huey wrote: > Assuming that your claim is true and that really did BSDi fail at > helping FreeBSD, it's because the FreeBSD community failed to provide > the leadership that's neccesary to push it your own project forward, > not the other way around. It's not directly the fault of upper > management here and is generally well known (freaking obvious in our > group) what's going on across the corporate pond. > > That's all I'll say about the matter for now. I guess you should know more about this issue than I do, since you are "in the loop" (more or less), but what I perceived as a failure on BSDi's part was the lack of success in _distributing_, not _making_ (or helping to make) a JDK port for FreeBSD. From Nate's last message on the subject I got the impression that Sun's lawyer team could only be matched by something like BSDi's respective team. Whether this would be something that BSDi _should_ have done (judging by their needs) is another issue, I guess. But that's only my understanding of the situation, of course. > WindRiver is a very different culture with the typically crap you > experience from large corporations. I'm not sure what to think of it > so far, but I can definitely say this about my experiences with the > current BSDi... I've *never* been talked down to by any of the core > engineers here which is a profound indication of how genuinely sincere > these folks are as human beings. You basically can't run a business as > financially tight as BSDi without having this kind of mutual respect. > > It's pretty different than the stuff you get directly from the OSD > folks and a number of FreeBSD engineers that basically are a bunch of > teenage idiots that have more ego than talent and crap talk about folks > behind their backs because they're largely suffering from self-esteem > problems. And having a more elite group validate your identity (BSDi's > commercial systems division) makes that crap talking from those > folks look pretty pathetic. The initial reason that lured me personally to FreeBSD, was exactly this perception of a team of decent people and excellent engineers that was creating all that great stuff. It's nice to know that the same thing was true for the project's cousin, BSDi. Now, of course you can't avoid dealing with a few facts of life here, namely that no two persons are alike and you can have always everything your way, but this gives us the opportunity to learn how to live and cooperate with persons who's minds work very different than ours, but their goals meet ours most of the time. Now, who said that computers take away your social skills from you? :-) > All of this is pretty upsetting. You can't help but wonder if you're > ever going to see these coworkers again, which have largely been > something like extended family with identical dreams regardless of > engineering seniority. I've been on a senior engineering track with > the JVM being my first "teething" project and everybody so far has been > extremely supportive about my growth/career path with an appreciation > of what I've done so far. It's going to be difficult replicating this > implicit understanding in what I expect will happen in a new corporate > environment. I guess we have all had our own share of trouble when changing working environments, but I find it quieting that we can have FreeBSD, or any other open source project you can think of, as a common passion/job/hobby/whatever, from which we never have to leave due to organizational restructuring, corporate mergers, bonehead managers, etc. To put it bluntly: this is something they can't take away from us. No matter where your professional career takes you, please keep hanging around. It's nice to have you with us :-). All the best, -past To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-java" in the body of the message
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