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To: Michael Hancock <michaelh@cet.co.jp>
cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Gotcha in moving to post 4.4 lite2 merge ``world''. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 15 Mar 1997 12:02:03 +0900."
             <Pine.SV4.3.95.970315115046.15385C-100000@parkplace.cet.co.jp> 
From: David Greenman <dg@root.com>
Reply-To: dg@root.com
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 02:40:04 -0800
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>On Fri, 14 Mar 1997, A JOSEPH KOSHY wrote:
>
>> A question: is the 4.4 BSD Lite2 source being worked on by anyone?  Will
>> there ever be a Lite3?
>
>People say Kirk McKusick is working on soft updates as a contractor to
>BSDI.
>
>Case 1: The release of these kind of enhancements would delayed
>long enough to give them a "competitive advantage". 
>
>Case 2: The enhancements will be considered their proprietary "value-add" 
>indefinitely and things will diverge more than ever.

   In the numerous times that I've spoken with Kirk in person regarding his
work on the soft updates stuff, I've never gotten the impression that he
intended anything other than providing the work to everyone (including us)
as soon as he was finished. In fact I spoke with him just earlier this
evening about it (at a sort of "Sushi" party that Jordan and I were at
along with Kirk), and he said that the only reason he hasn't released
it yet is because it occasionally panics and he doesn't want to give out
known broken code.
   ...so anyway, the answer is "none of the above" to your "case 1" and
"case 2" above.
   As to the original question about a lite/3, I'm told "definately not".
...but then, they said that about lite/2, too. :-)

-DG

David Greenman
Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project