Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 15:13:34 -0600 From: Tony Kimball <alk@Think.COM> To: current@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: We need to do another XFree86 release for -current someday soon.. Message-ID: <199603312113.PAA26582@compound> In-Reply-To: <199603310923.BAA11501@freefall.freebsd.org> (owner-current-digest@freefall.freebsd.org)
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The $80,000 question. > : Please, that isn't good enough to justify the cost. Stub them to > : return errors. There isn't anything to vote on; you're a month too late. That's just silly. Anything that can be done can be undone. It's just bits. The better part of wisdom lies in learning to gracefully correct mistakes. This is a mistake. Funny, nobody complained back when Garrett did announce his intention. Different audience. Fortunately there is now someone here to say that this was a mistake and should be corrected. All of these objections bear absolutely no logical relationship to the significant points, merely a rhetorical one. The overriding significant point lies in the question whether or not it is a good thing to do, upping the major version, consonant with the goals of the project. If it is not, it was a mistake and should be corrected if the cost of correcting it is less than the cost of living with it. I say it was a mistake, although not a terribly serious one. It is, however, serious enough so that I claim that correcting it is a worthwhile act. My claim is dubious in part because I do not have the power to correct it. However, that does not discourage me from pressing my claim: Quite the contrary, it encourages me, for I understand the inertia involved all too well, and if my claim is correct I understand that it must be vigorously pressed in order to obtain fair hearing. You're talking about thousands of people suffering an aggregate loss on the order of 100 petabyte-seconds of DRAM usage (given 5000 people suffering 500kB loss over the course of one year.) In dollar terms, that's roughly $80,000 in lost productivity. I expect with some confidence that the relatively minor trouble of fixing the problem is worth much less than $80,000. Perhaps $1000 at the most. An 80:1 payback is not bad at all. Missing such an opportunity to do good is a mistake indeed. //alk
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