Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 10:50:00 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, rkw@dataplex.net Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do! Message-ID: <199611221750.KAA15725@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199611212318.AAA23215@uriah.heep.sax.de> from "J Wunsch" at Nov 22, 96 00:18:52 am
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[ ... Joerg, in response to Richard ... ] > There's nothing like "core" that can be attributed this way, as if it > were a single person, in FreeBSD. There are only members of the core > team who try to discuss several `government' issues on their mailing > list, who often have (incidentally) agreeing opinions but also often > disagreeing opinions about some technical matter, and who last but not > least often spend quite a large amount of time on the project, not > only for coding but for much more boring tasks like release > engineering, user support etc. > > So pleas don't claim that "core" does/doesn't do this or that. Have you heard the term "pocket veto"? It comes from the process by which national laws are enacted in the United States. It's where a bill (a proposed law) has been passed by congress and sent to the president for him to either sign into law (if he agrees with it), or to veto (if he disagrees with it). If the bill is vetoed, the congress can repass the bill with an overwhelming majority, and it will become law anyway, over the veto. This process is called "overriding a veto". A president has a third option. If he neither signs, nor vetos, a bill in a specified time period, the bill is considered to have been vetoed. As if the president had put it in his pocket, and forgotten about it. A president may intentionally "pocket veto" a bill to delay the process if he believes the driving force is public opinion or otherwise caused by political expediency. This gives him time to defuse the political situation providing the specific impulse for the bill, and is a much more effective method of preventing an override than an immediate veto would be. Currently, there is no mechanism for "congress" (the contributors) to "override" the president's (core's) "pocket veto". To use a non-political analogy, the core team is engaging in source quench, when its job is to provide a comitted bandwidth. Failure to live up to this commitment is topologically equivalent to a "pocket veto". Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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