*BSD News Article 66612


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From: Peter W Boettcher <pwb+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
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 18:49:58 -0400
Organization: Freshman, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
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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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Excerpts from netnews.comp.os.linux.development.system: 20-Apr-96 Re:
Historic Opportunity fa.. by Terry Lambert@lambert.or 
> 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.

I disagree.  I am a fairly competent programmer, but do not have
the experience necessary to do anything productive with system
development.  I would, on the other hand, be willing to spend
some time working on applications.  I would also place two of
my friends in the same category.  In fact, I would argue that
there are much more than two groups... there is a wide range
programmer types, not just Those Who Program and Those Who
Don't.  I will probably become a Kernel Hacker(tm) within a few
years, but for now,...

Regards,
Pete Boettcher