Date: 15 May 1997 14:32:49 +0100 From: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk> To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: RELENG_2_2 Message-ID: <57wwp0rhby.fsf@tees.elsevier.co.uk> In-Reply-To: j@uriah.heep.sax.de's message of Thu, 15 May 1997 09:10:07 %2B0200 References: <199705141817.EAA01334@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> <17811.863652120@time.cdrom.com> <199705150526.XAA00025@rocky.mt.sri.com> <19970515091007.KD50309@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) writes: > Jordan, we should: > > . Make sure Thomas tells us they do indeed the correct maillocking (if > not, we should not risk shipping CDE CDs without a red warning > label: ``CAUTION: YOU CAN LOSE ALL YOUR MAIL AND CATS BY USING THIS > PRODUCT!'' :). > > . Urge Thomas to have the actual problem fixed (maybe by consultants) > instead of being hacked up. I understand his desire to not spend > much money into code that's not even his own, but as it seems, there > are quite a number of FreeBSD hackers here who are capable and > interested in fixing this problem, and willing to work as a consultant > to XiG. Maybe he could sell his fix to the OSF then. :-/ This is my gripe as well. We're making changes to FreeBSD that is against the general consensus because a third party supplier is not willing to invest in fixing something they wish to ship. I know this isn't black and white, we don't want to make it too difficult or expensive for third party suppliers to support FreeBSD but at the same time we don't to based on their (largely financial) criteria rather than technical merit. If we follow that path then over time we'll end up with a dysfuncational OS. I don't like Thomas' position in this case, it's basically, "dtmail is too complex to understand quickly and it would cost me money to get it analysed and fixed so if you want to support CDE change your OS". My inclination is, "no thanks". If Thomas was putting forward sound technical reasons why he thought we should change our mail setup then I'd listen but he's basically considering this from a financial basis and those sort of "cutting corner" decisions are what we all put up with in work and would rather not have happen in FreeBSD. Many people use FreeBSD because it works well and they can rely on it because we take care to do things the right way and not the "cheap" way. I'm willing to accomodate CDE as an "add-on" that changes the permissions but I wouldn't like to see FreeBSD itself change its defaults. Would Thomas consider giving a volunteer access to the source so it could be ported properly to FreeBSD? If it's so complex that it's a difficult job to change the directory lock files are placed in then is it really something we should ship with a FreeBSD stamp on it? This is a little off the issue but does anyone ever use dtmail? Having used CDE at work one of the first things I did was install a decent mailer, mailtool never struck me as a functional tool and dtmail has no noticeable improvements. Having made the effort to give CDE a good try at work I can't say I'm very impressed with it as a desktop. Microsoft still walks all over unix as a desktop environment, it's a pity CDE isn't really a more challenging alternative. of course, it may be that ls is still a lot easier and quicker than filemanager on either desktop and so on a Unix box it's that much harder to feel excited by a good directory browsing tool :-) -- Dr Paul Richards. [p.richards@elsevier.co.uk] Originative Solutions Ltd. [paul@originat.demon.co.uk] Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 (0)1865 843155 (Elsevier)
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