From owner-freebsd-current Thu Sep 5 11:05:27 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA06380 for current-outgoing; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 11:05:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id LAA06347 for ; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 11:05:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id LAA09500; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 11:02:20 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199609051802.LAA09500@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Latest Current build failure To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 11:02:19 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, rkw@dataplex.net, nate@mt.sri.com, current@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <6775.841926721@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Sep 5, 96 05:32:01 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > Joe Hacker will be more likely to present his credentials if you will > > define what "good stuff" is, other than a value judgement at the time > > you are presented with a fait accompli. > > I think we'd all know it if we saw it. We're not talking about rocket > science here, we're talking about a friggin' build system! Why is it > that we can instrument an entirely new VM system without much more > than 3 or 4 messages discussing ways and means, yet when it comes to > adding something like a new flag to the "od" command then 500 messages > are generated first, most of them highly impassioned. Because the turf involved has already been staked out, and is not subject to a territory battle. But by the same token, I believe the people who have pre-assigned fiefdom's are also starting to feel a bit pidgeon-holed by the kindom-building. As I said in a previous posting, it is a two edged sword. The most damning thing about this process is that it does not scale well. If FreeBSD is to grow, the process must change. It was recently pointed out to me that if you send a patch to Linus, you get an email acknowledgement, and you are told either that it has been integrated, or why it won't be integrated. Similar patches in the same area of FreeBSD from the same person sat in a mailbox for 6 months, and were only acted upon when the problem became a critical annoyance. As a result, the person no longer attempts to contribute to FreeBSD... and he is one of the best kernel hackers I have seen in a long time: like me, it has been his professional career to hack kernels. He is not a rube. > I for one am sick of this thread, and would far prefer to do the work > *myself* at this point than continue this discussion. It'd be a more > than reasonable trade-off. For you. And this discussion is only a process symptom of a wider architectural problem. Refusing to address the architectural problem by refusing to discuss anything related to it is tantamount to "hiding" by closing your eyes. It is ineffective, and eventually it will become obvious that it doesn't work. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.