Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 19:44:38 +0100 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> Cc: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org>, Warner Losh <imp@village.org>, "David E. O'Brien" <obrien@freebsd.org>, cvs-committers@freebsd.org, cvs-all@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/boot/common boot.c module.c src/sys/boot/forth loader.conf src/sys/conf Makefile.alpha Makefile.i386 Makefile.pc98 kmod.mk src/share/mk bsd.own.mk Message-ID: <20000907194438.A20005@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> In-Reply-To: <34628.968349974@winston.osd.bsdi.com>; from jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com on Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 11:06:14AM -0700 References: <nik@freebsd.org> <34628.968349974@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
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On Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 11:06:14AM -0700, Jordan Hubbard wrote: > > > Which are both excellent examples of how perception has gotten things > > > entirely wrong. The libh work has its own mailing list and open CVS > > > repository which anyone can subscribe to, > > > > Where was this announced? Searching for "libh" on our search engine turned > > It was discussed in several mailing lists, none I could be specific > about due to the passage of time but I know it was discussed because I > remember seeing the details in mail which wasn't addressed to me > personally. Enough other people evidently saw it to get involved and > the postmaster certainly knew enough to create a mailing list since > those things don't just happen by magic. No offense, but some people > need to read their email a little more closely and not assume malice > or secrecy where inattention would be a much more accurate explanation > for their ignorance of something. I'm not assuming malice or secrecy. I'm saying that our individual projects need to be better about promoting themselves. That might be as simple as a message to -announce, but it would be better if we were more disciplined about requiring at least a modicum of information about projects we're hosting before we host them. I assume you're not implying that working on the docs implies subscribing to every single FreeBSD mailing list. > > This list isn't mentioned on the site search page, Deja hasn't seen any > > announcements to it posted to the .announce group, and I've forgotten the > > The search page and other related documents, like the projects page, > are the primary responsibility of the docs group and you'd actually be > a in a far better position than most of us to explain just why those > have not been kept in sync with FreeBSD's progress. :-) 'cause no bugger ever tells us anything. To take this back where it started, I'd love to see a design doc that talks about why the recent changes to config(8) and the abolition of LINT were made. This doesn't have to be 50 pages of closely typed text, but it needs to be enough to boot strap interested documenters to go and do more. As you'll recall, that's how the "make world" document got written, and how I eventually ended up here. We can either wait for similarly minded individuals to come along and do the same thing for all the other corners of the project that are closely understood by five people and a mystery to the rest, or we can try and make it a little bit easier for people. History seems to indicate that those similarly minded individuals come along very rarely. Look at the .TXT files -- it's taken years for people to stand up and volunteer to maintain them, and my thanks to Dan, Bruce, and the others for doing so. Too often requests for information are met with cries of UTSL. But that's catch 22. If someone had either the time or the ability to UTSL then they wouldn't be asking for information in the first place -- it's much more likely they'd be digging in to the source code and contributing that way. The creation of the libh project and the beginnings of work on ia64 should, at the very least, have merited a post to -announce. > As for the .announce group, I don't know of anyone officially > connected with the project save Joerg who even reads USENET anymore. Fine. I do, and we have any number of people working 'unofficially' for the project that could either gate -announce to the newsgroup, or pass repost it directly. > BSDi's ISP dropped news long ago and I don't even have a news server > I'm allowed to connect to, which pretty much rules out posting > to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce or any other news group. It pretty much rules you out from posting to .announce, it doesn't rule out anyone else doing so. Have we asked for volunteers? > > No offense intended to either Mike or Paul, but neither of those messages > > reads as a "We're looking for volunteers, feel free to help out". Again, > > Actually, those sorts of messages went out quite a bit before the ones > you cite, back when we were far more optimistic and naive about the > prospects for a quick IA-64 port or the level of developer > involvement. The principal problem there is that in order to be a > volunteer you actually have to have some HARDWARE, and how many > committers with IA-64 machines do you know of? Exactly. The set of committers with IA-64 machines is not the same as the set of people who might be able to work on an IA-64 port. IPv6 didn't start from within the project, for example. If the community knew that assistance was required on the IA-64 port I think it's much more likely that we'd attract one or two non-committers who were interested in helping, in the interests of contributing something to FreeBSD and thereby becoming committers. N -- Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95. Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission, hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless. Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard. -- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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