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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.development:1377 rec.arts.poems:36598 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.kei.com!news.byu.edu!cwis.isu.edu!u.cc.utah.edu!cs.weber.edu!terry From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development,rec.arts.poems Subject: Re: Status of FDC Driver for *BSD Date: 4 Nov 1993 06:21:42 GMT Organization: Weber State University, Ogden, UT Lines: 75 Message-ID: <2ba71m$fkt@u.cc.utah.edu> References: <jmonroyCFvw53.H6K@netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.weber.edu Keywords: FDC BSD In article <jmonroyCFvw53.H6K@netcom.com> jmonroy@netcom.com (Jesus Monroy Jr) writes: >status of FDC driver [ ... ] > The FDC driver is done. It works. It lives with the > flaws of the components that respond to it. > > So why haven't any of you seen the FDC driver? > Basically the assumptions made about the UNIX and the > conventions, as to it's operations, continue to hamper our > channels. I am unclear as to the combined meaning of these sentences; they seem to be mutually exclusive, in that the kernel code is one of the things that that would respond to a floppy driver (by way of interrupt service routines, etc. Do you mean to say that you require additional support in the kernel for primitives the driver relies upon, or do you mean to say that it works because you have workarounds to missing primatives? This is an honest question. > You wonder if I'm just making this up or exaggerate > for pity. Far from it. We've all seen a decline in the > articles posted to comp.os.386bsd.*, while the C.O.L.* groups > continue in the bickering. As has been pointed out before, this is not a true measure of the activity in the community, nor of the quality of the software; what has actually declined is the number of articles related to patches, porting, kernel interface changes, utility updates, and release engineering. These have all moved off line to various mailing lists. Public access to these mailing lists is simple; for the most part, the division of labor between NetBSD and FreeBSD can be characterized as "kernel + ports to new platforms" vs. "386 + utilities update + package based release engineering". It is incorrect to characterize one as "research" and one as "stability", as some have done; the groups do not logically split on these boundries (in some ways the groups do not split at all). To find out what mailing lists are available, send mail to one or both of: majordomo@sun-lamp.berkeley.edu majordomo@freefall.cdrom.com These lists are for people actively interested in participation with one or both projects, and any "current" sources produced by either group may take a kernel hacker to make run at any given time between official releases. > I presented the idea, not too long ago, that the RTC > needs to be fixed. Many people agreed, but we're still > here. I happen to agree with this sentiment, but happen to disagree with the method which needs to be employed; in any case, since this is a public project rather than a corporate one, neither you nor I nor anyone else may make demands on time or priority assignment by the participants. Unlike some commercial UNIX implementations (whose timers are also very broken), there is no market impetus -- no one is paid for their work. If you truly feel your code is superior and intend to make it freely available, do so; it may be the necessary motivation for someone else to fix the problems you percieve. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@cs.weber.edu --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.