Subject: Re: Diaspora, politics, and MIf
To: Charles M. Hannum <mycroft@mit.edu>
From: Jukka Marin <jmarin@pyy.jmp.fi>
List: current-users
Date: 09/20/1996 12:28:38
> You're probably referring here to something I wrote in private mail.

I don't think so, no :)  It was someone else.

> It's true that I haven't had time to give you a full analysis of the
> problems with the driver.  That's a shame, but other things do have
> priority.

Well, not that you list the problems - I couldn't help that much.  Yes,
I could have changed the indentation (if I knew it was one of the problems)
and I could have checked for warnings with -Wall (it wasn't me who wrote
the driver, I never compiled it with -Wall myself).  But doing the other
changes without any kind of documentation of how to write device drivers -
no, I'm afraid I couldn't do that.

The only reference that we have are the other drivers - and as cy.c was
based on some other drivers, I think there might be problems in them as
well.

Could Someone Who Knows write "A Guide for Writing Device Drivers"?
I find it annoying that there isn't support for all common serial
cards (on i386, for example) and other 'simple' things.  If there was
a guide to help, maybe we who do not know could produce better code
in the future?

--

When whining about all the delays yesterday, I wasn't talking about cy.c
only.  It was only one example which I happened to know.  I'm not talking
to any core member personally.  I'm just trying to tell the whole team that
waiting for months or years for some thing that a user really needs can be
very frustrating - especially when you know the solution (which would make
you perfectly happy) is already there.

I think it's great that there is control over things going into the tree.
Just great.  But sometimes it feels that the only goal of this project is
to produce perfect code - not to serve the end users' needs.  Yes, bounce
buffers may be implemented before the year 2100, and it may make the core
team feel great, but it certainly doesn't help someone who wants to get
his machine running _today_.

I know some people will take this as a another flame, but I can't help it.
They seem to get upset about anything.. I guess they're just so religious
(and over sensitive?) about these things.  My purpose was to express what
I feel is a problem with NetBSD at the moment (and has been for quite
some time, AFAIK).  I wish there was a solution to the problem so NetBSD
would look even better from the end users point of view.

My apologies to everyone who feels I've offended him/her personally with
my comments.  It really wasn't my intention.

Thank you.

  -jm


-- 

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