From owner-freebsd-advocacy Sat Nov 28 22:38:26 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA29275 for freebsd-advocacy-outgoing; Sat, 28 Nov 1998 22:38:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from shell17.ba.best.com (shell17.ba.best.com [206.184.139.149]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA29269 for ; Sat, 28 Nov 1998 22:38:13 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from toddpw@shell17.ba.best.com) Received: (from toddpw@localhost) by shell17.ba.best.com (8.9.0/8.9.0/best.sh) id WAA28011; Sat, 28 Nov 1998 22:35:33 -0800 (PST) From: Todd Whitesel Message-Id: <199811290635.WAA28011@shell17.ba.best.com> Subject: Re: Merging Net/Free/Open-BSD together against Linux In-Reply-To: <19981127162648.R682@freebie.lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Nov 27, 98 04:26:48 pm" To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 22:35:33 -0800 (PST) Cc: adrian@ubergeeks.com, art@stacken.kth.se, alicia@internetpaper.com, netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG, FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, advocacy@openbsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL38 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > If there is suficcient interest/manpower to make it more than a > > one-man show, I'll set up a 3-way CVS mirror at UVa or maybe a local ISP. > > We can tag an initial starting point and start merging into one of the > > three trees. If this bears fruit we can then re-merge any recent changes > > and make it a new baseline for userland. (Yes, there is undoubtedly a lot > > more to consider, but it's a start.) ... > Count me out. I don't think this is a worthwhile effort. Discuss > things, maintain more communication, try to keep things pointing in > the direction, sure. But your efforts aren't going to give us a > unified userland: they're more likely to create a fourth version. Translated into something more constructive: An attempt to produce a "unified" tree first and then get everyone to switch over to it later is a bad idea. It does seem to be working with EGCS, but only because Stallman capitulated in order to prevent a full mutiny. I don't think we want a repeat of that over here. Provide a tree that people can use to merge individual userland programs, and publish status reports on how each individual program is doing: whether it is unified, and which of the 3 projects has adopted the unified version. It is vastly more important that the _easy_ merges get done than that _all_ the merges get done. I suspect that the reason most of the past projects failed is because too many people refused to even _start_ on them until they were certain that the entire stated goal of the project could be completed. Screw that!! A partial success still has much benefit for everyone. Todd Whitesel toddpw @ best.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message