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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!MathWorks.Com!news.kei.com!ddsw1!news.cic.net!locust.cic.net!pauls From: pauls@locust.cic.net (Paul Southworth) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: 386BSD is dead; long live 386BSD... Date: 25 Aug 1994 18:03:24 GMT Organization: ETEXT Lines: 41 Message-ID: <33imdc$mgb@spruce.cic.net> References: <jmonroyCuxMAB.8IL@netcom.com> <33b84i$482@spruce.cic.net> <CEB.94Aug24000713@netcom16.netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: locust.cic.net In article <CEB.94Aug24000713@netcom16.netcom.com>, Ch. Buckley <ceb@netcom16.netcom.com> wrote: >Very well said. But it's not quite fair to say that the Jolitz' code >development will ever be irrelevant to the *BSD family of operating >systems -- they were the first-movers, and it would not have happened >as fast or at all if they hadn't put the bugs in people's ear. I completely agree that this family of operating systems and this community of users would not exist in its present form if someone like Mr. Jolitz hadn't made the personal investment to get it started, I respect that contribution and appreciate that I wouldn't be here on this newsgroup pissing about these issues if 386BSD 0.0 & 0.1 didn't exist. At the same time, the "first mover" in this case is no longer the "prime mover"; the development of these systems is something far larger and more autonomous than a single user could ever generate -- that's a credit to the people who have generated the majority of fixes and enhancements to the systems. It's true for Linux as well. Linus Torvalds is not the same as Bill Jolitz (to dispel any misinterpretation of these words) but he's also quick to point out that while he is the first & prime mover behind a good chunk of the kernel, almost all the device code in the kernel is contributed (cf, last month's Linux Journal report from DECUS) and most of the userland porting and fixing is contributed as well. If something terrible happened to Torvalds (eg, got bored with the project and quit, hired by AT&T, or whatever) Linux would not just keel over and die; a group of people would step up to the task at hand and do it. Well something terrible happened to Bill Jolitz -- he dropped out of the development community that sprung up around his own creation. And guess what? A bunch of kickass programmers filled the vacancy, and they're not going to (and shouldn't) step aside and hand the steering wheel back to Jolitz just because of a CDROM full of more interesting code (er, we hope it's interesting anyway). I'm not even sure that Bill *wants* that (he doesn't seem to be saying). It may just be net-rantings from you-know-who. -- Paul Southworth CICNet Systems Support pauls@cic.net