Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 25 Jul 2000 11:56:05 -0600
From:      Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
To:        "Jeffrey S. Sharp" <jss@subatomix.com>
Cc:        freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: On the future of freebsd-small 
Message-ID:  <200007251756.LAA21159@harmony.village.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 25 Jul 2000 12:47:12 CDT." <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007251047020.8871-100000@lepton.subatomix.com> 
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007251047020.8871-100000@lepton.subatomix.com>  

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In message <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007251047020.8871-100000@lepton.subatomix.com> "Jeffrey S. Sharp" writes:
: Well, it appears that many people would like some radical change to our
: group in order fire up some genuine progress and keep small FreeBSD from
: dying.  There seems to be a lot of support for establishing some formal
: organization.  I suggest we elect, as Albert said, a 'Captain'.

I think that it is premature to elect anybody capitain.  I've not seen
any good design statements from any of the partipants yet beyond the
"motherhood and apple pie" statements.

: This would be represent quite a jump from where we are now, but we can do
: it if we try.  There are three issues to address: (1) Are we sure everyone
: wants this? (2) How should the vote be done? and (3) What will the
: Captain's responsibilities/duties/powers be?

Let's hold off on this until we can reach a consensus on where we're
going.  If we don't know where we're going, we can eaily elect someone
ill suited to the right direction of the project.

: (1) COMPLETENESS OF REPRESENTATION
: Before we do this, we need to ensure that we're doing what a good majority
: of the active participants on this list want.  If anyone does not want to
: elect a Captain, then please speak up.  I suggest we wait 2 days for this.

Let me vote no for now.

: (2) VOTING
: 
: After we've passed the first question, it's time to start a voting
: procedure.  I suggest this one:
: 
: 07/27 17:00 GMT - Begin accepting nominations
: 07/29 17:00 GMT - End accepting nominations; begin voting
: 07/31 17:00 GMT - End voting; tally
: 
: I also suggest that we use this list as a voting medium; it's quick, easy
: to use, and anyone can count the votes.

NO.  Let's not use the list.  It will be too public.  Also, the
period of time is too short.  It should be at least a week, if not
longer.  Many people go away for the weekend of a week in this country
and in Europe this is vacation time, where people literally are gone
for a month.

: (3) WHAT GOOD IS THE CAPTAIN?
: 
: When we vote, we need to agree upon what we're getting by electing a
: Captain.  I suggest these basic ideas as to what a Captain is for:
: 
: * a source for approval for significant commits by others

This is usually called MAINTAINER :-)

: * someone to take patches to for committing

Ditto.

: * delegation of duties, like finding someone to donate server space or
: finding someone to maintain a web page.

What's wrong with the FreeBSD web services?  One of the ***'d up
things of the linux world is that each project is on its own whacked
out web server.  The incremental cost of putting this information on
the FreeBSD pages is so small that one shouldn't waste any time at all
with the issue.  We should use what we have.

: * communication on the group's behalf with the mainline people

Coming from the PAO merge experience, I would maintain that if you
aren't mainline, you are setting yourself up for a ***load of pain
down the road.  You gotta have people who do lots of work on the
mainline as well as the tiny efforts.  That way they understand the
issues involved with making things small as well as understanding the
tools that are available that might make the tiny effort trivial or at
least close to trivial.

: * administration of voting over future issues, like if or how to
: change or replace the existing PicoBSD.

Core has this power.  We can't elect someone to do that.  It isn't how
things are done in this project.

Sorry to come off sounding like a sourpuss, but my first reaction to
this was that we'd be setting ourselves up for failure on a grand
scale.

Warner



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200007251756.LAA21159>