Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 13:39:55 +0200 From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@freebsd.org> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org, cvs-committers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A bike shed (any colour will do) on greener grass... Message-ID: <19991003133954.B24242@daemon.ninth-circle.org> In-Reply-To: <18238.938873650.1@critter.freebsd.dk> References: <18238.938873650.1@critter.freebsd.dk>
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On [19991002 20:18], Poul-Henning Kamp (phk@freebsd.org) wrote: >My last pamphlet was sufficiently well received that I was not >scared away from sending another one, and today I have the time >and inclination to do so. I am glad you took the time to write this out. I only wish more people would communicate more verbally about the what and whatnot. >The thing which have triggered me this time is the "sleep(1) should >do fractional seconds" thread, which have pestered our lives for >many days now, it's probably already a couple of weeks, I can't >even be bothered to check. > >To those of you who have missed this particular thread: Congratulations. I dare ask where this thread took place. Again I think it took place on cvs-committers. >It was a proposal to make sleep(1) DTRT if given a non-integer >argument that set this particular grass-fire off. I'm not going >to say anymore about it than that, because it is a much smaller >item than one would expect from the length of the thread, and it >has already received far more attention than some of the *problems* >we have around here. Problems at hand [some of which were enspired to me by Marcel Moolenaar]: - cross compilation, this obviously does not work. - lack of communication between the coders towards the -doc team. Need I dare say that pci_read_config, a lot of newbus stuff and god knows what else is still lacking from the documentation. I am working on it, but there's only so much I can grasp, understand and document each day. - lack of communication of the indivudual developers amongst each other. I have seen patches floating around and I have seen NIL comments when asked for testing, comments and what not. One example were Marcel's sig_t changes. >The sleep(1) saga is the most blatant example of a bike shed >discussion we have had ever in FreeBSD. The proposal was well >thought out, we would gain compatibility with OpenBSD and NetBSD, >and still be fully compatible with any code anyone ever wrote. > >Yet so many objections, proposals and changes were raised and >launched that one would think the change would have plugged all >the holes in swiss cheese or changed the taste of Coca Cola or >something similar serious. [snip bike shed analogy] >In Denmark we call it "setting your fingerprint". It is about >personal pride and prestige, it is about being able to point >somewhere and say "There! *I* did that." It is a strong trait in >politicians, but present in most people given the chance. Just >think about footsteps in wet cement. Ego, cherishing `babies' and the likes is something which doesn't work in commercial environment, and probably even less so in open source environments. >I bow my head in respect to the original proposer because he stuck >to his guns through this carpet blanking from the peanut gallery, >and the change is in our tree today. I would have turned my back >and walked away after less than a handful of messages in that >thread. Problems which also arise is that people divert from the topics which are at hand. I don't know anything about the thread and I somewhat refuse to dig through the committers archive by means of ftp in order to just read the thread, because I still believe that these kind of things should have been discussed on the appropriate lists. >And that brings me, as I promised earlier, to why I am not subscribed >to -hackers: > >I un-subscribed from -hackers several years ago, because I could >not keep up with the email load. Since then I have dropped off >several other lists as well for the very same reason. The load itself might not be the burden if only the signal-to-noise ration would be a lot better. A lot of the topics at hand should've been made to questions. >And I still get a lot of email. A lot of it gets routed to /dev/null >by filters: People like Brett Glass will never make it onto my >screen, commits to documents in languages I don't understand >likewise, commits to ports as such. All these things and more go >the winter way without me ever even knowing about it. > >This is where the greener grass comes into the picture: > >I wish we could reduce the amount of noise in our lists and I wish >we could let people build a bike shed every so often, and I don't >really care what colour they paint it. > >The first of these wishes is about being civil, sensitive and >intelligent in our use of email. > >If I could concisely and precisely define a set of criteria for >when one should and when one should not reply to an email so that >everybody would agree and abide by it, I would be a happy man, but >I am too wise to even attempt that. > >But let me suggest a few pop-up windows I would like to see >mail-programs implement whenever people send or reply to email >to the lists they want me to subscribe to: [fun, but somewhat non-practical pop-up windows removed] >The second part of my wish is more emotional. Obviously, the >capacities we had manning the unfriendly fire in the sleep(1) >thread, despite their many years with the project, never cared >enough to do this tiny deed, so why are they suddenly so enflamed >by somebody else so much their junior doing it ? > >I wish I knew. I can give an example. This is just a very, very clear example of what we in dutch call the best sailors are on the shore. I mean, it is easy to criticise and say NIH, while in all fairness people don't bother to offer hints or new diffs to counter the `mistakes' the originator made. >I do know that reasoning will have no power to stop such "reactionaire >conservatism". It may be that these people are frustrated about >their own lack of tangible contribution lately or it may be a bad >case of "we're old and grumpy, WE know how youth should behave". > >Either way it is very unproductive for the project, but I have no >suggestions for how to stop it. The best I can suggest is to refrain >from fuelling the monsters that lurk in the mailing lists: Ignore >them, don't answer them, forget they're there. Which might be `fun' considering that those who want to progress test, review and commit and see their changes backed out the same minute they are committed to the tree. Why? I do not know. Any request for rationality often gets brought back to the case `we don't used to do that'. Times are changing people. A healthy dose of reviewing is indeed good, but do it beforehand. >I hope we can get a stronger and broader base of contributors in >FreeBSD, and I hope we together can prevent the grumpy old men >and the Brett Glasses of the world from chewing them up, spitting >them out and scaring them away before they ever get a leg to the >ground. At current, I can very much understand the reluctance of `new/young' coders to start work on the system only to see their efforts get trampled upon by `older/more experienced/more rusted shut' people who like it as it is and don't want innovation to hit the system, or otherwise don't seem to be able to offer a mentor-like/helping-hand function towards these new people. >For the people who have been lurking out there, scared away from >participating by the gargoyles: I can only apologise and encourage >you to try anyway, this is not the way I want the environment in >the project to be. I cast my voice/vote with Poul on this. -- Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven/Asmodai asmodai(at)wxs.nl The BSD Programmer's Documentation Project <http://home.wxs.nl/~asmodai>; Network/Security Specialist BSD: Technical excellence at its best Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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