Subject: Re: Community Issues
To: Mason Loring Bliss <mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us>
From: Scott Reynolds <scott.reynolds@Plexus.COM>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 02/21/1999 16:49:55
I think the idea of a netbsd-chat list is not unreasonable.  It would be 
nice if current-users wasn't the catch-all that it has turned into!

There's two points that I think we need to challenge, though:

On Sun, 21 Feb 1999, Mason Loring Bliss wrote:

> [...]
> However, NetBSD is seriously falling apart, socially. There's a huge amount
> of bickering that goes on, and the project has no visible direction. We lack
> both the unity seen in the FreeBSD and GNU/Linux projects and the direction
> seen in OpenBSD.

Regarding the bickering, this isn't true.  Hang out on their lists for a
while; the grass really isn't any greener over there.  The problems we have
are not unique, and occur when more than one person works together on a
project.  As I heard from someone recently, `where there are two people,
there are three opinions.'

I also don't believe that we have no visible direction.  We are making
steady progress with the integration of new ports and new hardware, and I
don't believe that any free UN*X has matched our technical innovation.
Announcements are posted both to the NetBSD user community and to relatively
Linux-centric outlets like freshmeat and slashdot.

Can we do this better, though?  Of course!  What we need in this area is for
someone to step up to the plate and start evangelizing.  Any takers?

--scott