Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 12:04:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: NAKAGAWA Yoshihisa <y-nakaga@nwsl.mesh.ad.jp>, Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: HEADS UP!!!! Important instructions for -current users! Message-ID: <199904171904.MAA75813@apollo.backplane.com> References: <12290.924371109@zippy.cdrom.com>
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:> Is this formal decision of core team ? I feel a huge despair, as a
:> member of newconfig project ....
:
:This was a core team decision, but I really do hope we can still
:figure out some way of working together on a final hybrid of the best
:ideas from both projects since this honestly wasn't done with the
:...
:
:I also have to say that this has pointed out, once again, that
:communication is really lacking between the various groups, especially
:in situations where a language barrier exists. Most of us didn't even
:know about the newconfig project until comparatively recently, and I
:...
:
:I don't really like the word "loser" very much, however, and would
:much rather that everyone focus instead on the best route forward from
:here since we've made the decision, for better or for worse, and need
:...
:- Jordan
I think Jordan has nailed it on the head, as usual.
I would like to address the communications aspect of the problem,
because I think it is fairly easy for us to solve it.
Simply put, people are not using the 'hackers' mailing list enough.
If you notice, whenever I'm working on something that is fairly intrusive
to the code base, I post updates to hackers at fairly regular intervals
( or to current if its a patchset for a bug ). I think it is especially
important to do this even if there does not appear to be a huge amount
of external interest. A week or a month down the line, someone might
*become* interested in doing something similar to what you are doing and
they aren't going to remember the one message you posted N months ago.
As an example of the obviousness of the solution, I would point to CAM.
the CAM guys posted updates 'almost' regularly enough. When the time
came to shoehorn it into the source tree, there was grumbling but enough
people knew it was coming that CAM had no real trouble getting in.
I would say that if the CAM group had posted updates more regularly then
they did, there would have been even less argument and confusion. If they
hadn't posted anything at all, it might not have gotten in at all.
Same thing goes here.
--
Point #2 : The language barrier. Language is always a barrier, but it is
made much worse when people to take a guy to task for his 'bad english'.
I would ask people to STOP DOING THIS. Do not harass or ridicule someone
for not being fluent in english! Now, it is sorely true that someone will
often post to the list a message on the order of "my machine crashed,
please fix it!" without one iota of additional information -- but please,
people, be polite! If you don't want to try to help the person, do not
answer at all. Else allow other people to lead him through the procedure.
Many of these people are trying a hellofalot harder to communicate then
us fluent english speakers ( we who tend to not know any language other
then english, which is quite sad! ).
-Matt
Matthew Dillon
<dillon@backplane.com>
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