Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 00:07:17 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@freefall.cdrom.com> To: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) Cc: gene@starkhome.cs.sunysb.edu (Gene Stark), hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Minutes of the Thursday, April 13th core team meeting in Berkeley. Message-ID: <1799.798448037@freefall.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 20 Apr 95 11:27:26 MDT." <9504201727.AA25462@cs.weber.edu>
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> Let it be forever noted that 2.0 was an exception. It was a rush job > that was done to appease legal requirements and to keep the FreeBSD > efforts afloat at the same time avoiding legal action by USL. It > had the nice side effect of resolving the legal issues for Walnut Creek > at the same time, which can only be a good thing, given the backing > they have provided. May I take this moment to make a further point? 2.1 is also an exception. 2.1 is a software project in the full throes of Second System Syndrome, and thus can't really be considered a "normal" release either. Everyone, myself included, wants 2.1 to be "radically better." They want all the features that were glaringly missing in 2.0. They want to "do it right this time". If you've been a developer all those years and for all those companies as you say, then you KNOW exactly what's going on with the core team right now and you also know that you're about as able to stop it as you are able to stop the earth from rotating. S^3 is a phase that all developers go through with their pet projects (the ones that live past the first release, anyway) and all the manager usually manages to do is hang on and sort of steer, dashing in from time to time to make wholly unreasonable demands regarding ship dates. "He Doesn't Understand", say the developers. "It Must Be Better This Time." I'm not ashamed to admit it. We're doing all the classic things. FreeBSD 2.2 will be a more sober release, a "we're not going to do another 2.1 style one, that took too long!" sort of release. 2.3 will be a "Hey, we're sort of starting to get the hang of this!" sort of release. In other words (and I'm saying this to everyone, not just Terry): Just relax and enjoy the ride. We're going pretty well, all things considered, and there are certain hoops we're just going to insist on jumping through, no matter how much we may know about them in advance! I've been watching this from the beginning, and I've seen many a good suggestion (a few excellent ones, in fact) go by without even a comment. Groups like this seem to have high intrinsic latency periods, and no matter how much you may force feed them with ideas or other input, they adopt them at their own pace and in their own time. There will be some frustration with our methods. There will be many people who think we're complete idiots for not doing it Their Way. Still other people will grow very attached to certain ways we do things only to be vastly dismayed when we change them. I'm not saying what sorts of things will happen and when, just that this is an evolving process which we are, to some extent, making up as we go along! Have a little patience with us, and (again to everyone and not just Terry) maybe try to send us a little less email so that we have time to actually work on this stuff! :-) [Seriously speaking, my email input load has become a crisis - I can't go on this way!! :-( ] Jordan
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