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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.development:545 comp.os.386bsd.misc:223 comp.os.386bsd.questions:1946 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!crcnis1.unl.edu!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!msuinfo!uwm.edu!ogicse!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!ns1.nodak.edu!plains.NoDak.edu!tinguely From: tinguely@plains.NoDak.edu (Mark Tinguely) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Leadership Keywords: netbsd, 386bsd and beyond Message-ID: <C5yH0F.Hn6@ns1.nodak.edu> Date: 23 Apr 93 21:29:03 GMT Article-I.D.: ns1.C5yH0F.Hn6 Sender: usenet@ns1.nodak.edu (Usenet login) Organization: North Dakota State University Lines: 72 Nntp-Posting-Host: plains.nodak.edu I see a lot of confusion with the netbsd "split". The fundamental questions are: a) who be the development leader? b) what does that leading mean? I see many comments (and I felt this way myself), that in the ideal world we want Bill and Lynne to be the development leaders of a linear product. In my opinion, their leadership in the past has been in the form of complete releases and the network, with little direction, took upon itself (namely the patchkit people) to choose a common environment from all the submissions. Besides the leadership issue, lately there are also some comments about the degree of "linearity" of the future new releases. I can imagine the frustration the patchkit people must have when they have to choose features for a product they do not have control over. For example, should we replace a subsystem only for it to be gone in the next release. In my opinion, most people are looking for more active leaders, which is the major push behind netbsd. I recently sent mail to the Jolitz's expressing my concern about communication and asked the open question about their thoughts about the netbsd "split". With Lynne's permission, I am posting the reply. I apologize for not having copy of the original letter I sent to her, so please do not assume she is directly answering the above comments. I know that there must be change on both sides for everyone to get along. Please use this as a forum to express your feelings and ideas. Maybe we can get input from all sides to resolve some questions. -- Lynne's mail -- Mark, I think the patch people have done an excellent job, and we have never stated otherwise. It's a very hard job to do, especially to do well. It takes time and experience to learn to differentiate between the correct and incorrect. It's taken us 15 years of experience, so it will take them a bit of time to get up to speed. In the meantime, one can learn a lot. As to the netbsd split, people are free to pursue other avenues if they so desire. 386BSD is for "fun" -- if someone doesn't find it interesting or if he has other directions he wishes to pursue, I'm not going to stop him (but I'm not necessarily going to give him my blessing if I personally feel it is unwise). In sum, people should be free to choose their own path, come what may. I understand the problems with feedback. Between correspondance, email, phone calls and work (on the release, on writings, and on regular paid work), there is very little time left for things like netnews. We are doing touch-up on 0.2, so I sure hope people will have a bit more patience. I can understand their impatience with the patchkit, however. We found about 1/3 of the patches were reasonably correct, 1/3 were wrong, but indicated to us a problem which we traced down, and 1/3 were completely wrong. Of the last group, there were several patches which will completely destabilize the system if implemented (*dangerous*) -- causing crashes and the like. But considering the amount of work it takes to produce a consistent and correct patchkit, it actually is quite an impressive accomplishment. The patchkit groups should be very proud of their work. One year ago no one had ever attempted an effort such as 386BSD. Now, there is host of new groups gaining experience -- not just about the gross structure or user level items, but also about the complexities and subtleties which make releases interesting to explore. I expected to see incorrect work, but the amount of good work I've seen has also been beyond my expectations. Things are actually looking very good for 386BSD and it's users. But, back to work... Lynne.