Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 13:06:37 +0200 From: Feico Dillema <dillema@acm.org> To: hm@kts.org Cc: logix@foobar.franken.de (Harold Gutch), freebsd-isdn@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: i'll unsubscribe from isdn-freebsd Message-ID: <199809151106.NAA13503@hyper.huygens.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 15 Sep 1998 10:17:38 %2B0200." <m0zIqIs-000010C@bert.kts.org>
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Your message dated: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 10:17:38 +0200 >Harold Gutch wrote: > >> Are there any apparent reasons for this you would share with us ? > >The reasons are twofolded - one thing is that most of the private and >commercial users of i4b seem to have a strong consume-only mentality, I've been a consume-only user mainly too. I only recently switched from bisdn to i4b. I've tried to work on the bisdn code for some time, and managed to add some stuff in an incredibly ugly way (i.e. not fit for publication) that I needed at the time. Working with the bisdn code and trying to understand it, was `above my head' and it took me an awful time to get a minimal understanding of how things worked. A few weeks ago, I switched to i4b and was very pleasantly suprised of its ease of use and installation, but also about its much clearer structure and code. I haven't contributed to i4b yet, but I'm starting to get more comfortable with the idea that I'm cabable of contributing (at least at the higher levels of the stuff) after spending some time looking at the code. Maybe it's the same with others. I have great respect for the authors of i4b, as I know ISDN is a complex beast. I think, maybe, it's time for more users to realize that the current quality of i4b makes it feasible for them to contribute, especially at for instance the daemon or application layer... >and i don't like to be a free outsourced development department. The >other thing is the reaction or non-reaction in public and private of >the FreeBSD core team regarding an open letter published on -hackers >which indicate that it is neither necessary nor worth nor appreciated >to contribute to FreeBSD and all is fine as long as one shuts up. I'm a NetBSD-user myself, so I cannot comment on the above. I follow NetBSD development out of interest and have only made small contributions to NetBSD like little bug-fixes. My experience with the NetBSD community is that such contributions, even when these are small, are appreciated and stimulated. It sometimes takes quite some time before new code is entered into the NetBSD source tree, but generally that is because of concerns about code-quality and about discussions about `the right way' to do things, *not* because of *who* actually made the contribution. I'd love to see i4b become part of the NetBSD source tree, and I think it's about time it gets in there. It would also make i4b more accessable to users/developers of non-Intel platforms. >But perhaps this is just a mere fantasy and so i'll take a break, >unsubscribe from all FreeBSD mailinglists and do a reality check. I find it difficult to believe, that the FreeBSD core team and/or community could have come so far with the attitude described above. So, I hope and assume it is either not true or a temporary thing that will go away before too many people that have made great contributions to the free software community become cynical and disillusioned. Independent of the core-team's attitude and opinions, I hope that the respect you have and deserve from the user community will positively influence your decision. Anyway, thanks for i4b... Feico Dillema. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isdn" in the body of the message
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