Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!jkh From: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu (Jordan K. Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: To Merge or Not to Merge *BSD. What does it really mean? Date: 12 Jan 1995 02:45:00 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 48 Message-ID: <3f253c$es0@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <3enogm$5l7@fw.novatel.ca> <D2638B.Eut@park.uvsc.edu> <3f15dh$bp@knobel.GUN.de> <3f1h83$hgl@newshost.lanl.gov> NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu In article <3f1h83$hgl@newshost.lanl.gov>, Charlie Sorsby <crs@beta.lanl.gov> wrote: >In article <3f15dh$bp@knobel.GUN.de> andreas@knobel.GUN.de (Andreas Klemm) writes: >= I'd like to see a migration, too. A unified BSD community would >= have so much advantages... > >Seems to me that merger would be a two-edged sword. Indeed! What some people don't adequately consider when they scream "merge! merge!" is just what the social effects are going to be. From the technical side, it's EASY by comparison! From the people side, it's anything but easy. Consider that you'd have two groups of generals now working together - some of them still very bitter towards the other generals, and looking secretly for any excuse to tear the other General's battle plan apart. It's guaranteed chaos in the campaign tent, my friends! Every agreement would take twice as long and be hard fought. The generals would spend so much time fighting with eachother that the war could be lost outside and they might not even notice. On top of this, you have their two respective user communities suddenly smashing together, some fearful that their favorite feature or directional focus is going to be lost in the merge, and they're battling with the other users about which *BSD had the "best" this or that. Hoo boy! Buy me a bus ticket outta town! I think that I can say without too much fear of contradiction that if a merge happened today, a number of the top members of both groups would take a walk. The process might be to everyone's best advantage in the long term, but in the short term it would be hell. It would be a very horrible place to be, like Somalia during a feud between two rival drug lords. I would not hang around for it, chosing instead to abdicate and go on a long vacation or business trip somewhere. I would not be alone in doing so. People would unsubscribe en-masse from the mailing lists in disgust after the first 2 weeks of jubilation and flames, mixed together in equal proportion, poured into their mailboxes like untreated rainwater. Yes, the merge would also be a very DARK day. So let's not put on rose colored glasses and pretend that those at the center wouldn't suffer any ill-effects from a merge. When you suggest that the groups merge, you are intentionally or unintentionally wishing a good deal of hardship on both core teams! I am personally not feeling quite so masochistic this month, thank you. Jordan