On Tue 02 Jul, Mark Brinicombe wrote:
 
> Also on the point of documentation....
> 
> The idea is that users also contribute. I could be wrong here but I suspect the
> reason users are not writing device drivers, debugging the kernel etc. is that
> they do not fully understand it and that it is rather complex.=, not to mention
> lack of time.
> Now if I freeze all riscbsd development for a month and write docs then no
> kernel development will happen. If you ask most users I would suspect that they
> would prefer me to spend my time working on the kernel rather than docs as docs
> are something that other people can write but the kernel isn't.
 
> When you have a number of things to be done it is surely better to make the
> most of the skills those people have.

	It depends on how you look at it, supposing you take two weeks to write,
'how the kernal source tree works', 'how to write device drivers (a complete
list of all the function calls with notes and mentions of which are subject to
change)', 'a list of areas of the kernel to develop', and 'where (ftp sites) to 
get the latest up-to-date kernel source for both netbsd and arm32'. Suppose that
this (heroic effort!) encorages 3 more people to helping, yes we've lost 2
weeks, but in the next 2 we have four people working at it where previously we
had one!, a great improvment.
	
	The main reason for linux's success is not that Linus sat down and wrote
a complete unix, but beacause Linus sat down and encouraged friends to write
bits of linux and to encourage their friends to write more bits etc...
	
	Why work when you can delegate!
	
	P.S. until Southamton deceides weither they want me I'm not doing
anything until the end of august. If no-one else has voluntered to do the bcopy
stuff of the libc things I'll do/assist with one of them. I've looked at the
in_chksum stuff and thought it would be a bit out of my depth.

-- 
Jasper Wallace, DeadFish Software. | Likes: Caving, Acorn Computers, choclate
http://not.really.anymore.org/~jgw | Risc BSD User.
E-Mail:jgw194@santaari.tcp.co.uk   | Dislikes: Windows, People who spell cool
Tel:01703 315160                   | `kewl'.