> >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.
> 
> Are people supposed to volunteer, or do we get invited?

Better not write any code for NetBSD at all.  For example, I _paid_
someone to get a working Cyclades driver.  The driver does work indeed,
but it doesn't look correct enough to some people, so they are laughing
at the code now and telling me "it needs work" before it can be included
in the tree.

> What those of us without CVS access do now is send in PRs, but it's
> very discouraging to send in a bug fix and have it sit in the PR
> database for many months without any apparent action.

When I fixed a few bugs in the Amiga A2232 driver, it took several
months before those fixes got into the tree.  The same with the Hydra
Ethernet driver (the fix is in the tree now, isn't it?).

Now that I'm talking about these things I'm receiving personal flame mail
from the Ones Who Know Better.  Very incouraging.  Someone says "he has
heard that the Cyclades code is bad".  Instead of telling me WHAT is wrong
and should be changed, they're just flaming me because the code is "bad".
Well, that "bad" code happens to WORK - something that the cy.c in the
source tree does NOT.

I'm not going to follow this much longer.  Fortunately, there's an
alternative OS which accepts improvements and new drivers even if they
weren't written by the Perfect People with the Highest Standards.

I guess this mail will be censored and I will be banned from the lists
or something.  In that case, thanks to all the people who have offered
me help.  I wish all the NetBSD developers were like you.  I haven't
been talking to anyone personally, but it seems that some people just
think I'm talking to _them_ and flaming them.  I don't know WHO are
responsible of the NetBSD policies and I don't CARE.  I just get the
feeling that this group can't understand the end users at all.

  -jm

-- 

                     ---> http://www.jmp.fi/~jmarin/ <---