Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 13:37:00 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: julian@whistle.com, terry@lambert.org, khetan@iafrica.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd@iafrica.com, danielc@iafrica.com Subject: Re: Terry Message-ID: <199701212037.NAA19913@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <19650.853829928@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jan 20, 97 10:58:48 pm
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > send me the first patch as soon as you are ready! > > Yes, I noticed that Terry was strangely silent on that whole paragraph > of mine where I described his previous attempts at squirming out of > producing any actual, usable code when asked for it in the past. Not > that I expected him to come up with a credible excuse for his antics > with Poul-Henning (or lack of response to John). You made such a number of factual errors that it was not worthwhile taking you to task over them. For example, you stated that I had not submitted anything that was accepted since the LKM system, totally ignoring patches to various FS components (like fsck and NFS itself), the "free inode isn't" workaround, and the massive init_main.c changes (which were my design). --- > Or would Terry like to argue now that submitting whitespace changes in > lieu of filesystem patches which actually apply against any reasonably > current version of FreeBSD was part of his overall strategy, and that > it was up to us to simply *intuit* his intent from the form and > structure of the whitespace changes? :-) Terry would argue that just because someone lives in Tucson and they want to drive to Salt Lake City doesn't mean that they shouldn't drive to Flagstaff: it's on its way to the right destination, and moves you closer, even if it isn't itself the destination. Quit bitching about my code when I figuratively drive to Flagstaff. I am well aware that the figurative Flagstaff isn't the figurative SLC, and I do not need your nannying to remind me of the fact. For the longest time, the tools used by the FreeBSD project were not capable of supporting concurrent branch developement unless you also had commit access to send changes to yourself, or unless you were willing to reintegrate changes on a weekly or even daily basis. I had the sorry choice of stopping all forward progress (which is independent of your opinion of it, since it's *my* forward progress) while waiting for integration, or of proceeding concurrently with multiple projects. I chose to do the latter. Now, in order to make the changes palletable to people unable to grasp the destination from a compass heading, and with them unwilling to discuss anything but what fast food place we should eat at when we get to the destination, I must make the journey from here to there in incremental stops. ...Only there are no gas stations for you to make incremental stops on the road to the destination. That is, intermediate code may include pieces which have no immediate visable purpose, and unless you ask if there is a purpose instead of blindly attacking the *perceived* purposelessness, you will probably not get an explanation. > Terry has been asked so many times to either put up or shut up when it > comes to technical matters, but when we actually ASK FOR HIS CODE we > find again and again that the emperor not only lacks clothing but > defends his nakedness as a paragon of sartorial splendor, citing OUR > lack of vision as the problem if we can't see the fine tailored > stitching and gleaming golden braid of his outfit for ourselves. Forgive me if I can't take 2 1/2 years of research and make it look palletable to you when you have divided trays with tiny little comparments in which you insist any meal served to you must fit, and you won't agree to leave the tray design alone long enough for someone to prepare a meal. You can't even agree on what a good design would look like beforehand; it's like blindly submitting an essay to an essay contest, only to be told what subjects are acceptable for discourse *after* the submission. As a specific example: The failure to even define what an acceptable build system should look like so that there is some reasonable assurance of acceptance of the work, after the effort is to be expended on spec., has blocked out at least two "warm bodies". And that's just one tiny fraction of the whole. I have the misfortune of having to work in several fractions simultaneously, and apparently "several" is an unpalletably large number. Define a happy meal, and I will ship you a happy meal. Define a happy meal, and Richard and all sorts of other people will ship you all sorts of happy meals. You will be swimming in happy meals, if only you would *COMMIT* to a definition so that us "warm bodies" could feel comfortable expending huge amounts of effort on spec.. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199701212037.NAA19913>