Quoting Niklas Hallqvist,

> It has come to my attention that Theo Deraadt is about to start yet
> another BSD.

> As I believe this is a bad thing for the NetBSD project as a whole I'd
> like that this splinter-project did not happen.  Therefore I'd like
> core to go to extreme lengths to not make this happen.

Hell, I didn't think FreeBSD shouldn't have happened when it came out,
or, come to think of it, I was very sceptical of NetBSD when it first
started. Obviously Yet Another BSD is BAD. Imagine 4 different groups
working on post-4.4BSD code on the Sparc (BSDI, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD).
Ugh. Wonder if CSRG ever had this problem?

> Another thing that I'd like to bring up, is that the notion of people
> with CVS access should be seen as spokesmen for the NetBSD project.
> Good coders are not necessarily good PR-guys.  The only requirements
> valid on people wanting CVS access should be technical merits IMO.

This distinction does exist, I think? The spokespeople are Core for general
matters and the port maintainers for specific areas. Other people with CVS
access (like me) are clearly only spokespeople for their own code.

> Third, I'd like the community to get more power when dealing with PR
> issues and the making of requirements of people with certain positions
> in the NetBSD project.

Central coordination is good. It does depend on how much time the coordinators
have to deal with PRs & such, and this can be a problem of course (people
try to have a real life sometimes). So sometimes people can get frustrated
when their suggestions are not dealt with soon. The response to PRs is
generally pretty good though.

Maybe the forum Niklas is talking about could be a seperate mailing list,
as I am sure a lot of the people who are on this list for mostly technical
reasons are not interested in it. Also, it gives a bad impression to
newcomers, who may think NetBSD is mostly about politics.

- Frank