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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.misc:2789 comp.os.linux.misc:20149 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!news.dell.com!tadpole.com!uunet!epiwrl.entropic.com!usenet From: kenh@wrl.epi.com (Ken Hornstein) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: I hope this won't ignite a major flame war, but I've got to know! Date: 20 Jul 1994 11:27:51 -0400 Organization: Entropic Research Laboratory, Washington DC Lines: 31 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <30jfpn$kdl@sparc2.entropic.com> References: <30h8kt$fcv@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <1994Jul20.040243.5860@cs.cornell.edu> <SJA.94Jul20171747@gamma.hut.fi> <1994Jul20.150208.23766@cs.cornell.edu> Reply-To: kenh@wrl.epi.com NNTP-Posting-Host: sparc2.entropic.com In article <1994Jul20.150208.23766@cs.cornell.edu>, Matt Welsh <mdw@cs.cornell.edu> wrote: >In article <SJA.94Jul20171747@gamma.hut.fi> sja@snakemail.hut.fi (Sakari Jalovaara) writes: >>> Can J. Random User really _directly_ contribute to the [*BSD] >>> project? How much red tape does it require, if so? >> >>My experience in contributing fixes to *BSD: >> >>I found a bug in a program. >>I fixed it. > >What about adding new code, features, or applications? Well, if you do the integration work, and the core team deems it useful enough for everyone, then it gets put in. I admit this can be arbitrary at times, but both *BSD camps seem to be rather open about adding new features. For example, NetBSD (and FreeBSD, I believe) just added S/Key support to login, and both groups are pretty open to accept contributed device drivers. I don't see how this is that different from the way all Linux kernel changes have to pass through Linus. *BSD only has one "distribution", so to speak; this has advantages and disadvantages. Unless integration work requires extra programs be added (for example, the key generating programs for s/key), then extra applications don't generally seem to end up in the base distribution. NetBSD has a "othersrc" collection for things like that, while FreeBSD has a nice set of pre-compiled "packages". Again, there are positive and negative aspects to this approach. But it doesn't seem hard to get user-contributed code into either of these collections. --Ken