Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 17:35:23 -0800 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> To: "Ignacio Cristerna" <ignacioc@avantel.net> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: About introducing newbies to FreeBSD Message-ID: <1158.973215323@winston.osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: Message from "Ignacio Cristerna" <ignacioc@avantel.net> of "Thu, 02 Nov 2000 18:19:59 CST." <FOEDJPDHEFHBAFLANPOBMEFHCOAA.ignacioc@avantel.net>
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> Jesus, Jordan, why do you always have to take it personally. We all want I don't and didn't take it personally. > FreeBSD to be the premier Open-Source Unix and I think this discussion will > lead to a better understanding of the reasons for the way some "features" > work. I think we would be better off if we didnīt consider the point being > brought up here as an attack. It wasn't an attack. You seem to have a hard time distinguishing between hostility and pragmatism, my letter reflecting a 100% dose of the latter and none at all of the former. I'm not out to quash discussion, I'm trying to steer discussion into one of the areas it has consistently failed to go in every single time this issue has come up (and it's come up with almost stultifying regularity) - IMPLEMENTATION. We've been over a huge and hypothetical landscape of desired features more times than I can count and anyone wishing to cut to the chase on that discussion merely need search the mailing list archives with the keyword "installer" - it truly has been all said (but not done) before. What needs to happen now is for someone, and let's say that someone is you for the purpose of this argument, to actually sit down and organize all these desired features into a set of more practical "this is what we can reasonably accomplish" bullet points. Then for each bullet, you need to write a first-draft implementation and throw it out for general comment. Even when you don't get a lot of feedback in return, you then need to have the perseverance to get through each of the bullets and wrap it all up in the form of an ftp'able floppy image (or images) which can actually be run and tested. At that point, all the empirical evidence I have available to me suggests that people will start to get *really* interested and start providing diffs or outright filling in the missing sections of your new installer if it really does fill the bill. Sysinstall took about a year to come fully to fruition this way but we can also hopefully assume that your effort will be able to benefit substantially from 20-20 hindsight and cut this time by around 6 months, so the sooner you start coding, the sooner we'll actually see the kind of tangible results everyone wants to see. I have only one question: When can you get started? I also hope you're not going to respond that you lack the time or the skill to do this since everybody says that and, as an answer, it's gotten pretty old and weak. Pleasantly surprise us all instead by answering my question with a proposed time-table why don't you. :-) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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