From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jan 12 16:10:36 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id QAA24008 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 16:10:36 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp03.primenet.com (smtp03.primenet.com [206.165.6.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id QAA23823 for ; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 16:09:47 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert@usr08.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp03.primenet.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA02410; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 17:07:01 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr08.primenet.com(206.165.6.208) via SMTP by smtp03.primenet.com, id smtpd002314; Mon Jan 12 17:06:53 1998 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr08.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA24458; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 17:06:46 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199801130006.RAA24458@usr08.primenet.com> Subject: Re: X based Free installation To: perhaps@yes.no (Eivind Eklund) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 00:06:46 +0000 (GMT) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, shimon@simon-shapiro.org, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, capriotti@geocities.com, tom@sdf.com In-Reply-To: <86hg79z7an.fsf@bitbox.follo.net> from "Eivind Eklund" at Jan 12, 98 10:55:28 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk > Sure. But there is a spiral here - more coders contributing -> more > users -> more coders contributing. This feedback loop is not unbounded. It's closest analogy is a damped, driven, harmonic oscillator. You can't drive it beyond the damping harmonic. If you know a sailor, ask them about the relationship between the length of the bow-wave and how fast a sailboat can go. They will tell you that after a certain wind speed, more wind won't make the boat go faster. > There is only one organizational problem with FreeBSD that I see > clearly today: Responsibility too often boils down to a group of > people, instead of one person. I think each submission/contact to > FreeBSD should boil down to the responsibility of _one_ person. I'm not going to get into this right now; my opinions are known, and you can look them up in the archives. 8-). > I previously posted to chat advocating a mentor program which > basically boiled down to this (people that wanted to contribute could > mail committers and get a single contact person, who then were > responsible for their submissions). I got almost no response. > > Does this mean that I'm the only person that belive this would be > useful? Probably. Ask yourself if a mentor program will increase the smallest harmonic wavelength of all harmonics that apply. Define the harmonics any way you want, or look in the archives for my definitions, and use them. Either way, I think a mentor program won't really help resolve the issues resulting in the limit function. > Eivind, who notice that this is almost no work to organize, and still > think it is _just_ what FreeBSD needs. > > p.S. Sorry for the off-topic post, but it didn't work mailing this to > -chat :-( Well, if you talk people into it here... you should establish a metric up front so you can measure positive or negative impact; otherwise everyone will be able to come to different conclusions about the programs success, and you will just have a lot of people arguing that whatever-there-mutually-contradictory-pet-point-is was "proven" by the experiment. You could even do a fuzzy boundry, and time-bind it: o If desired result X occurs by N time units after the program is established, the program shall be deemed successful and shall not be discontinued. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.