From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Apr 12 13:44:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA20688 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 12 Apr 1997 13:44:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.50]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA20666 for ; Sat, 12 Apr 1997 13:43:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA15723; Sat, 12 Apr 1997 13:21:45 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199704122021.NAA15723@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Commercial vendors registry To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 13:21:45 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, scrappy@hub.org, pgiffuni@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co, hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970412160250.00b1f100@etinc.com> from "dennis" at Apr 12, 97 04:03:00 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >OK, you lost me here. > > > >If I hack on a release, it's no longer a release, it's a -current. > >All new work following a release must be, by definition, done against > >a -current, not against the release. > > There's too much "its fixed in -current" or "it'll be in the next release" > and not enough commitment to getting fixes and important new feature > into the short-term. Fixes, maybe, if they were treated as releases themselves, and could be applied to non-stock systems. But "important new features"? No way... a new feature waits for a release. Releases are *defined* by a feature freeze. Add a new feature, and once again, you have a -current. > For example, right now, most of the effort should be in making 2.3 > near-perfect (given the imperfections in 2.2.x), not "dicking around" > with 3.0 or some future, bug-filled release. Well, you'd have to list explicit bugs in 2.2.x, and get them to agree to a 2.3 (for what it's worth, 2.3's have been historically ill-fated for UNIX a-clone OS's...). In general, there's problems with attempting to forward fixes through subsequent releases -- I'd have to say that any fix taking a 2.2.x to a "fixed" 2.2.x (is 2.3 really the right place to put the tag?) would probably be expedient in the extreme, and probably not something you would want following you into the next release. It's not like maintenance efforts get "budgeted"... > >What is the Focus for SCO? > >What is the focus for Windows 95? NT Workstation? NT Server? > > Something to consider is that if your big enough, you dont have to > have a focus because you have enough resources to do everything. > People ask why we dont have NT drivers (as I could probably write it > it in a week or 2), but we cant focus on unix if we dilute ourselves > with dealing with and supporting NT. You end up with a bunch > of mediocre products instead on 1 or 2 really good ones. SCO and > microsoft are big enough to be general purpose OSs..... Well, that's something for me to ruminate on... I don't necessarily agree that "if you're big, you don't need focus" somehow implies "if you're not big, you do need focus". Focus is no substitute for vision. The Suns and Novell's of this world have taught us nothing if they have not taught us that. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.