Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 00:21:56 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: noslenj@swbell.net (Jay Nelson) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Merger, and what will its effects be on committers? Message-ID: <200003110021.RAA15362@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.10003092014480.723-100000@acp.swbell.net> from "Jay Nelson" at Mar 09, 2000 08:17:02 PM
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> On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Terry Lambert wrote: > > [snip] > > >> Given Greg's error rate, it is a safe bet that it did. > > > >Yes, yes, I saw it when I got home. > > So, Terry, are there any rumblings inside IBM about this? I won't speak for IBM, but I can speak about the concerns that have been voiced to me. There's some concern about getting the legal stuff out of the way with regard to how the BSDI code will be licensed in the FreeBSD code. There's also a little concern about how fast a bunch of commercially supported core-team/committers might be able to push the code in different directions, compared to an unsupported effort. To get a taste of this, you should consider the situation that occurred when Matt Dillon sold Best Internet off, and was able o spend 8 hours a day hacking new code, and how a volunteer core was not able to keep up with reviewing it at the rate he was able to produce it. They throttled it back by removing, and then conditionalizing, his commit priviledges, something that wouldn't really work with several core members backing a commit. Finally, there's some concern about proprietary drivers not being available for the free version, and displacing freely available drivers in the free version, leaving no free alternatives. I'm sure that most of these issues will be ironed out when the dust settles, and given that Jordan talked about many of these and made the appropriate right noises at the right places last night at th BAFUG meeting (here at Whistle/IBM), I think that we are all prepared to take a wait-and-see position. I haven't spoken to the lawyers, but if no one tells them until after the dust settles and the air is clear again, they won't be able to get their panties in a bunch over it. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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