Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 05:53:32 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SUID-Directories patch Message-ID: <9942.879515612@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 14 Nov 1997 03:37:28 PST." <346C37F8.62319AC4@whistle.com>
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[Cc trimmed to just include -hackers] > And what's so bad about devfs and divert sockets(mentionned in your > other mail)? > Divert sockets came directly from a conversation with > Kieth Sklower of the CSRG who wanted a way of bringing some > packets out of the kernel for processing because there was too much > in there already. It's an anti-kernel-bloat tool, and it works great. > You've never needed it obviously. (actually DIVERT is not my baby I > just checked it in for someone else) > > If I ever got the help I've asked for so many times > devfs would be finished by now. Just my two bits, and I should probably stay out of this since I've had absolutely zero luck lately dealing with "the august body" of -hackers (it was literally all I could do to prevent myself from unsubscribing for good last night), but I think that this whole argument stands in danger of becoming polarized to the point where feelings are unnecessarily bruised on both sides and that's something I think we've seen way too much of lately, so let me try and put things in some perspective. First off, I just got done defending your past contributions in -core so don't please think that I'm lining up to give Julian a shot in the goolies along some of the others who have already done so - I and many other folks greatly appreciate the work you did with the early SCSI subsystem, along with some of your more recent contributions, and I'd hate to see you go off in a huff, feeling distinctly unappreciated and unfairly judged. I don't think that anyone would dispute the fact that you played a very pivotal role in the early days of FreeBSD. However, like all projects, we've also matured over the last 4+ years and with that maturity has come a greater degree of conservatism in how we do development and in what we expect from any contributor who seeks to take on a fairly major chunk of development. What might have been considered reasonably acceptable development practice 4 or even 2 years ago simply won't fly now that we have a much larger user base and are under considerable pressure to produce a professional quality operating system which sets itself well apart from our "competition" in this arena. This means that any work started in the tree needs to be taken to completion regardless of the degree of participation by others, and anything you "sign up for" needs to be something which: A) You are capable of completing by yourself, any additional help being in the "nice to have" category but not strictly necessary to the project since additional volunteer help simply cannot be counted on as any kind of given. B) Something which *is* completed and in a timely fashion, not simply left as an "exercise to the reader" as it were. I don't mean to speak for Soren, but I do believe that he brought up DEVFS more as an example of something which violated both A and B than as an attempt to twist your tail and I can speak without fear of contradiction when I say that it would simply not be possible for you to introduce such an unfinished work in today's FreeBSD. Yours is also hardly the only example of this, others being the aborted ISDN project (which I brought in, to my later embarassment) or Garrett's devconf stuff which never fulfulled its promise and was later yanked out to general bitterness and mutual finger-pointing. We obviously don't want a repeat of those sorts of situations again and I think that folks have reasonable grounds to worry about *anyone* who has been responsible for such half-baked assaults on the tree in the past. It doesn't mean that said person will be judged unfit for all time, simply that they will have to work just a bit harder in proving to a skeptical audience that they've fully grasped these new operating principles and *will* finish anything they start, whether or not anyone else comes forward to help them with the burden. It's simply the only way to do things now if we want to avoid a tree full of good intentions but non-working code. So, what would probably help greatly at this point in proving to the skeptics that Julian Elischer, Esq is capable of working within these new operating parameters would be an acknowlegement on your part that you understand the A/B principles given above and a further committment to either removing all traces of DEVFS from the system or implementing it entirely to spec sometime within the next 60 days. If it also seems like I'm unfairly singling out DEVFS among your other notable accompishments (and I, for one, rather *like* the divert socket mechanism - well done, Whistle) then please understand that I'm underscoring it for the simple reason that it's your current unfinished opus and something which stands in the way of your "rehabilition", so to speak. It's also something which simply needs to either be finished or yanked out, like the other examples I listed above, and if you're keen to work with us then this is obviously the first item on the worksheet. Again, make no mistake. If you or anyone else wishes to develop something of an experimental nature for FreeBSD then you should by all means feel free to do so, but *in your own tree*. FreeBSD-current is a good place to refine and test new mechanisms but not the place to start placing the initial scaffolding in hopes that a few more builders will show up and help you erect the supporting members of the house. The time when that kind of approach was workable is well behind us now and people simply need to adjust to that fact. Regards, Jordan
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