From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Nov 29 16:44: 6 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from imo-m03.mx.aol.com (imo-m03.mx.aol.com [64.12.136.6]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EB2A937B41A; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 16:44:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from A180009977889@aol.com by imo-m03.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v31_r1.9.) id n.10e.8fb0dc1 (1332); Thu, 29 Nov 2001 19:43:53 -0500 (EST) From: A180009977889@aol.com Message-ID: <10e.8fb0dc1.29383049@aol.com> Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 19:43:53 EST Subject: RE: Netgraph To: hackers@freebsd.org Cc: questions@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 139 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In a message dated 11/29/2001 7:30:46 AM Eastern Standard Time, joe@tao.org.uk writes: > > Lets face it. If you were going to sit down and design an interface for > frame > > relay, multi-protocol support, etc, you'd have to be smoking something > pretty > > strong to come up with netgraph. But its free and there is source, so it > > must be great! > > Please please please! Have you read the source code for netgraph? It > may be unintentional on your part but the above paragraph reads like > you've made an assumption about what netgraph is and how it works and > have decided that it's inefficient and therefore of not much use. > > Netgraph is great, but not because it's free and there is source. It's > great because conceptually it's like lego, and in effeciency it's very > quick. Netgraph hooks in device drivers are extremely useful. > "Lego" is a good analogy. The "usefulness" is not the point. Its great for hackers, and terrible for the general technical population. It depends on your goal, whether its to build an OS for hackers, or to gain widespread acceptance for FreeBSD from the general technical public. Complicated, unintuitive interfaces with a long learning curve are not generally accepted. DB To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message