Subject: Re: A release-users list
To: Alistair Crooks <agc@pkgsrc.org>
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
List: current-users
Date: 05/17/2001 22:07:14
| > > How would this be substantially different from the general purpose
| > > netbsd-users list that we already have?
...
| For people who want to discuss problems related to the release branch,
| the general purpose netbsd-users list is far too much of a scatter-gun
| approach.

I don't understand why that is the case. Could you please be a little
more clear?

Are you saying that people on netbsd-users have a reasonable
expectation of not getting mail about the problem-of-the-week when the
netbsd-1-5 branch fails to compile or work properly on their hardware,
and they only want to hear about issues with 1.5 or 1.5.1 but never
netbsd-1-5 of 15 May 2001?

If that's the case, I do think that naming the list "release-users"
would be poor. What you really want is "release-branch-users"
or "-current-release-users" or somesuch, but those names are unwieldy.


Initially I agreed with Nathan that netbsd-users was adequate for
release branch issues. But now I'm inclined to think that is untrue,
and it's not appropriate to use that list for problem-of-the-moment
issues with the release branch.

I concur that having only one list is fine, though.

I will also put forth the possibly irrelevent datum that such a list
might be a disincentive for people to file PRs (as already happens
with current-users).

--jhawk