Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!decwrl!apple!kaleida.com!conklin
From: conklin@kaleida.com (J.T. Conklin)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: 386BSD Participation (was: Digiboards and BSDI/386)
Date: 24 Jun 93 12:31:57
Organization: Kaleida Labs, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <CONKLIN.93Jun24123157@ngai.kaleida.com>
References: <1993Jun4.094829.6159@spcvxb.spc.edu> <1993Jun11.080552.6234@spcvxb.spc.edu>
<1993Jun11.181807.8884@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <C8ryBL.Jyn@percy.rain.com>
<20ada9$5k5@agate.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: conklin@kaleida.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: ngai.kaleida.com
In-reply-to: wjolitz@soda.berkeley.edu's message of 23 Jun 1993 20:09:45 GMT
bj> The "greed" battle for control, or "cold" war begins. 386bsd
bj> florishes, as real people finally get a chance to participate with
bj> BSD, something they have waited for ten years for.
I don't see that anyone has had a chance to participate. I am sure
that lots of people have contributed their work to you, but that is
not the same as _participation_.
From working with both the interim and the netbsd groups, I can assure
you that there is a lot of argu^H^H^H^Hlively discussions between the
_participants_. This interaction results in a better system, as it is
the product of many people's experience.
Although I have sent you bug reports, patches, etc., I have yet to
hear back from you on a technical matter (I did receive a thank you
note from Lynne). I understand that this is the case with many of the
people who have attempted to participate. It just doesn't happen, we
are expected to trust you to integrate our work correctly. In fact,
we won't even know if our work is going to make the cut or not until
the next release (I know, "real soon now").
I have contributed to various freely redistributable projects:
libtiff, pbm, nethack, gnu-*, cvs, etc. Without exception, I was able
to interact with the principal developer(s). I felt like I was
participating, with 386BSD, I feel like I'm being used.
NetBSD has a open source tree: any user can oversee what is being done
as it is integrated. Users who disagree with the decisions being made
or have particular incites or expertise that they wish to share are is
welcome to come aboard and _participate_.
386BSD may have a lot of users, but it doesn't have any participants.
I'm believe that the number of users will rapidly start to diminish
unless people are truly allowed to participate.
If you are not able to provide the leadership that is required to
allow users to particiapte, perhaps you should join one of the groups
that filled the void when you abdicated your responsibility. I can't
say that you would be welcomed with open arms, since you seem to take
the oportunity to slander the efforts of those same people that have
made 386BSD the usable system it is today.
--
J.T. Conklin <jtc@wimsey.com> | We provide floppy and tape distributions
Winning Strategies, Inc. | of NetBSD, A BSD UNIX Compatible OS with
61 Crestwood Drive #18 | complete source code for the i[345]86 PC.
Daly City, CA 94015 |