Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 23:20:19 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk> Cc: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams), Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>, Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net>, Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Reasonable decision-making [Re: HEADSUP: wd driver will be retired!] Message-ID: <2590.944896819@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 10 Dec 1999 19:14:01 %2B0100." <6235.944849641@critter.freebsd.dk>
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> The ATA driver went golden now, and to make sure nobody is distracted > from testing it before 4.0-RELEASE is cut, the wd driver will be > removed. > > It's really that simple. Well, I'm not sure that's really true yet and I would honestly prefer it if you wouldn't make "conclusive statements" like this without waiting for a reasonable period of time, *after* the flame war in progress has died down and everyone's done venting and flapping their arms, to come to a decision with all the "votes" carefully weighed (and appropriately weighted). To do otherwise would send a strong message that your intention was to procede regardless of public opinion, which would further imply that the more consensus-based process of deciding these things somehow does not apply to you. People would then ask why this process does not apply to you when it appears to apply to others, raising embarassing and annoying questions about equality, egalitarianism, core Stalins, the insidious effects of space aliens genetically modifying Danish dairy cows, etc. etc. From what I've seen of the thread so far, this has already sort of begun to happen and my strategy on the whole affair at this point has been to simply make marks on a tally-sheet near my keyboard, whacking `delete' in the mailer after making the appropriate check mark under the "yes", "no", "undecided" or "went off into the weeds on a completely unrelated tangent" columns. This allows me to try and sift out all the emoting from the Real Issue(tm) to be decided and, hopefully, come to my own conclusions based on the tally-sheet and further discussion with those parties directly involved (no, I didn't forget them). I'll even be happy to post my little tally of this whole sorry thread to -committers, assuming there's any interest in such a synopsis. In any case, the Real Issue here appears to be whether or not it's necessary to socially engineer people by removing the wd driver one week after the ata driver was declared "golden" or whether it's perhaps more prudent to simply leave the damn thing there for now and just stop maintaining it, leaving its future to Darwin and/or some future committer who takes an axe to it because it's rotted for so long that it finally no longer even builds and/or functions at all. All other discussion has been more or less tangental to that issue. I have my own opinions on this, of course, but I'm more interested in what everyone else here has to say about it right now. Maybe I'll change my mind once I've finished making my little marks and talking to people, and you yourself would certainly not lose any points with your audience by demonstrating a similar degree of flexibility. It certainly doesn't seem like too much to ask for. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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