Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 22:29:08 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: julian@whistle.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Terry Message-ID: <21891.853914548@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 21 Jan 1997 18:36:31 MST." <199701220136.SAA20588@phaeton.artisoft.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> So put up signs pointing out the direction. The whole purpose of > having a small core team is to provide the project with a unified > vision, isn't it? What good is that if the only place there are > signs is on the restricted access campus? There are no signs anywhere, Terry, either on or off the "restricted access campus" (and that campus is smaller than you think - write access to the CVS repository is basically ALL we really control). We're making this up as we go along, to be perfectly frank (I looked for "How to create your own free operating system project" at Barnes & Nobel but didn't have much luck), and as far as I know the purpose of the core team is really to provide a focus for existing (and sometimes conflicting) visions more than it is to be a wellspring of vision itself. Hell, most of the core team members don't agree with *one another* half the time (and that's not necessarily always a bad thing) and have a very wide set of interests. I could jabber on about installation tools all day in core and maybe one or two people tops would feel compelled to comment on it. Our biggest ongoing job is to rubber-stamp new members coming into the commit list or core team, and as that only happens about once or twice a month (the former, not the latter) it's not a big part of our day. Our rubber stamp is also applied fairly liberally, with those who have shown a definite interest in sheparding this or that into the source tree and with no serious tendency to fumble-finger patches being pretty much just ushered right in. The core team does not do management as a general rule, it does mostly development. It is only called upon occasionally to do management, and more than this would only aggrevate and annoy the various hackers who compose the core team and would really like to spend their time doing development instead. I wouldn't have it any other way since we NEED development. > I will be taking Julian up on his offer once I can get a new CVSup > set up for my local machine, and start migrating changes. Wherever > Poul offered "half an hour ago", I haven't seen it; was the other > list the core team list? I'm not on that list. This was last raised then, but Poul says that he's made the offer repeatedly before now and this is hardly the first time it's come up. You really don't remember any offer from Poul to give you access to a machine where you could put your bits? Strange. > In any case, I plan to take Julian up on his offer... though I was led Great! > to believe that the effort wouldn't be worthwhile until the Lite2 > integration was complete (something Poul and I *had* discussed when he > originally made his offer right before my accident). Is it now > worthwhile because the Lite2 integration is complete? Or is it > now worthwhile because the Lite2 integration has been scrapped? Well, Lite2 may well prove a short-term inconvenience, but that doesn't prevent you from putting your code up for review in the interim. Helping with the Lite2 merge would be another way of making it worthwhile, of course. :-) > Actually, it's "what kind of food are you up for?" so I don't have to > list all the restaurants in town for you to say "no" one by one until > we get one you like. If you are up for ziti, say so, so that I don't > have traverse the whole damn alphabet looking for it. Well, like I said, we're always up for bug fixing and general enhancement, and there's definitely plenty of that to go around. Beyond that, heck, pick something which interests you and go for it. When you've got something to the stage where you'd like others to help you test/review it, announce it to hackers and put your bits up somewhere. If the review goes well, have it committed. > Actually, I just mean "acceptable" in the sense of "capable of being > accepted". That's why I used that "able" suffix and didn't use the > word "guarantee" in there anywhere. To you and Richard: Anything which solves the make ordering problems (/usr/src is not "self contained"), deals with cross-platform builds and/or generally makes the Makefiles easier to understand (since further obfuscation is hardly desirable) is welcome. If you want a reviewer, I'll be happy to volunteer. > I'm asking for you to tell me what the shelf where the happy meals > are stacked looks like so I can build a happy meal that won't fall > on the floor. I'm not asking you to build happy meal boxes for It's at this point that the analogy starts to break down. :-) I don't know what consistutes a "shelf" in the analgous side of this picture. > I grasp the concept of evolutionary progress... I simply don't bow > to it as if it were a god just to keep all the peasants bowing along > with me. It is inefficient compared to revolutionary progress, and That may be, but revolutionary progress from someone who has yet to demonstrated prowess at working with the group over even small issues is not what we're looking for either. What's so terrible about a little dating first before deciding on marriage? :-) > Gee, and I always though my most significant contribution to the > project was building the first patchkit: the seed that grew into I didn't think you cared to admit that, so I didn't raise it. :-) Jordan
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?21891.853914548>