Date: Fri, 21 Apr 95 10:39:50 MDT From: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) To: hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Minutes of the Thursday, April 13th core team meeting in Berkeley. Message-ID: <9504211639.AA03566@cs.weber.edu> In-Reply-To: <1799.798448037@freefall.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Apr 21, 95 00:07:17 am
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I'll keep this brief, in respect of the request for reduced mail load. [ ... BSD in throes of second system syndrome (S^3)... ] With respect, S^3 is something that students fall prey to. You might argue that companies do so as well; I susbmit that these are not successful companies. > 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. [ ... inevitability od S^3 ... ] I disagree. This is true of companies of 5 or less people -- ie: companies without a release engineer. Since it is the release engineer's option to take any snapshot of a source tree and turn it into a release, unless the RE him/herself falls prey to S^3, you don't have a problem. Any you hire RE's based on this job being their third or later system. [ ... involved in the classic errors ... ] This misses my original point, which is these errors are violations of the release protocol. It is still not a flawed protocol that puts people in a bad position, it's flawed enforcement of a good protocol. Models based on flawed protocol don't last long enough for S^3 to set in. > 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! The release engineer's job is to take before and after pictures and use only the before pictures if it's a flaming hoop and he's not really sure that the jumpers clothes aren't on fire yet. I seriously suggest "The Mythical Man Month" and Guy Kawasaki's "The Macintosh Way" (which has the full business plan in it). I suspect most of us are old and crusty enough that we've read these once or twice already. [ ... good suggestions going by without comment ... ] Typically, these are common-sense statements, and there's no need to comment. All of us Monday morning quarterbacks 8^) manage by exception, which is to say we try for course corrections only if we see something wrong, and you don't stir otherwise. This is a practice that results in occasional criticism but little praise (and Jordan himself does this occasionally 8-)). Anyway, recognition of problems is the most important step to take in solving them. Good job, guys! Terry Lambert terry@cs.weber.edu --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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