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From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX)
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 13:48:54 -0700
Organization: Me
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <31794DB6.7DE974DF@lambert.org>
References: <NELSON.96Apr15010553@ns.crynwr.com> <3175DBD4.167EB0E7@FreeBSD.org> <4l5f31$ijv@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> <3176D081.794BDF32@FreeBSD.org> <4la318$ah3@sidhe.memra.com>
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Michael Dillon wrote:
] The fact is that the successful collaborative software
] development projects up to now have been mostly systems
] level stuff like *BSD, Linux, X, wxWindows and so on. If
] we can collect a core team of people who are willing
] to manage an *APPLICATIONS* development project using the
] same collaborative techniques, then we can tap into the
] skills of people who are reasonably good programmers but
] don't have the mindset to dig into SCSI driver race
] conditions and VM paging systems etc...
]
] These really are two separate groups of people so I don't
] think it would have any negative effects on the *BSD or
] Linux projects.
I don't think this works.
In practice, we reaaly have two groups of people: those who
burn their free time playing with computers and those who
don't.
I'd argue that the people you are talking about belong to
the second group -- they aren't willing to cook a bunch of
Saturdays on building "Word for X windows".
The people in the first group quickly become systems level
people. They tend to be into it for the challenge, and
finding SCSI driver race conditions (per your example) is
a heck of a lot more challenging than getting the cursor
to the right screen location.
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.