>Would someone please explain to me whether everyone shares the attitude
>that if it's not MI, it should not be implemented whatsoever? 

I think, in general, that this is the very core of NetBSD.  NetBSD has
been fairly conservative, in the respect that things always need to be
done "correctly", or not at all.  This is a big win in the sense that
we get some very well designed code, rather than code that "just
happens" (you might think of a certain OS that starts with
L.... here).  This is one of the reasons many of us are here.  NetBSD,
in general, is a _designed_ system.

Now, with that in mind, there are times I would like them to make
certain exceptions.  But, in general, the more strict they are about
this, the better for NetBSD in the long run.  It may not be as fancy
as some other OS', but it's certainly cleaner, and probably a bit less
buggy.

>I've heard a lot of things said back and forth between OpenBSD, NetBSD, and
>FreeBSD.  I've been very happy with NetBSD, excepting the political arguments 
>that seem to spread across mailing lists and newsgroups.

I've been on other lists.  Believe me, these arguments exist
everywhere.  The only thing that changes are the details.

>If bounce buffers are never going to be implemented in an MI manner, 
>if we're going to have to maintain an army of patchfiles on a hundred different
>ftp servers, please let me know.  

I would bet money that they will be implemented eventually.  But,
there are only so many people, with so much time, and the people
willing and/or capable of doing this work just haven't gotten to it
yet.  What would help most is more people who are willing and capable
of doing this kind of work.  What would help almost as much is people
not quite capable of that level of work, helping out with more mundane
tasks that take time away from these other people.

>Because I installed RedHat linux on a machine this week, and I see a lot of features
>I'd like to implement on NetBSD.  But if the niceties that literally every 
>other PC unix have implemented are not ever going to be implemented by NetBSD,

That's a little unfair, and untrue.  NetBSD has actually implemented
several things that have drifted over to the other camps.  The ccd
"raid" driver, Linux emulation, sysV emulation in general, Linux
dosemu support, BSDI dos emulator support, etc.  Not _everything_ gets
invented somewhere else.

But, Sean, maybe NetBSD isn't for you.  Maybe you would be happier
running FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, or Linux.  Only you can decide.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael L. VanLoon                           michaelv@MindBender.serv.net
        --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
    NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
        Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
    NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------