On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 11:59:57AM +0200, Gilbert Fernandes wrote:
> I have a dream.
> 
> A dream of unification.
> 
> Having one BSD. Merging the three projects and, why not, keeping
> incompatible stuff as options that would be either one or another.
> 
> But when you tell yourself that it cannot be done, you don't even
> try it.
> 
> It would require people to not only do it for the sake of their projects,
> but for the whole BSD people. Even those who really piss you off in
> other projects.
> 
> Because someday, those projects will live on without us. We'll pass on
> like everyone.
> 
> Am I alone thinking this ?

Sure would be kind of nice, but in practice its nearly like saying,
"I want that the world gets one car". Please unify Mercedes, BMW,
Ferrari, VW and all of their models ;-)
With design goal: Modularize car in a way, that the different
customer demands can be achieved as options.

You'll get problems in many ways ...
- too many different - partly contradictory - design goals.
  One car is more a racing car, the other tries to be kind to
  mother nature
- too different customers demands
- different company cultures ...
- many leaders that have to give up their own goals and synchronize
  with each other
- say good-bye to own companies history and habits and be open
  to be only part of a new team

For a volunteer project it sounds nearly impossible to synchronize
all the different people with different goals and culture to the
project targets _and_ be productive and write good code !

If the situation of NetBSD is the way like Charles Hannum describes
- I'm no insider therefore I formulate it carefully this way -
then a possible way could be a fork of NetBSD.

But does the world really needs one more BSD ?
Maybe the discussion itself is useful for making a cut and
trying to reorganize the team by avoiding all that turns out
to be a misconception.

If this is not possible and people are convinced a fork
with a strong leader would bring more merits and productivity,
then a fork still could be done later.

A fork off alone from NetBSD by keeping all the CPU and architecture
support might be very tricky and difficult.

Its questionable if one person is able to draw good design
decisions that are well for all different NetBSD ports (here
I mean the different architectures).

Maybe a fork would need to specialize on one or some CPU types
that a small team is able to handle.

	Andreas ///

-- 
Andreas Klemm - Powered by FreeBSD 6
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