Subject: Re: rc.d
To: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
From: Greywolf <greywolf@starwolf.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 03/18/2000 11:07:43
Mouse,

As much as (Hey, FRANK!) WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!, and the process
is still absolutely insolent, I must respond to your take of Yet Another
Fragmentation with a resounding NO.  Theo went off and did OpenBSD because
core at the time left him no other choice -- he was banned from here due
to highly unacceptable and unprofessional social behaviour which was
apparently having a tremendously negative impact on the Project.

To go and fragment over this issue, as much as even I dislike the material,
and as much as I think the process is still a bit flawed, would be folly.
It's not something I need that badly to fragment.

Not that I disagree with your arguments, mind you.  But think about it.
There's how many sects of Paganism, Christanity, Islam, Linux, UNIX already.
We're still ahead of the game -- we only have four distributions (soon to
be three): BSDi, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.  To fragment again, I think,
would sink the ship, and seeing as I have a hell of a lot of effort and time
invested in NetBSD, as you do, I'm not willing to take that step (yet).

I will again restate for the record, though:  Those of you who think that
the UI doesn't have anything to do with what is a BSD system are quite
WRONG.  The UI, the API and the kernel are all very much linked into the
definition of an OS.

Now, onward...

On Sat, 18 Mar 2000, der Mouse wrote:

frank-> [...rc.d hashed out multiple times, to no clear conclusion...]

frank-> At that point, you can only come to the conclusion that, if you want
frank-> something new, which we do,

der Mouse> What "we" are you speaking for here?

I can only assume that Frank is part of core; if he's not, speaking "we"
includes a small majority.

frank-> So, a decision was made

der Mouse> By whom, and why was nobody even warned?

...and I will agree with this...

frank-> to bring in Luke's work, and hopefully work out some remaining issues
frank-> with the input from the users on this list.  Some useful input was
frank-> given, but unfortunately it all lead to just another one of these
frank-> long-winded, religiously-flavoured threads.

der Mouse> I trust this is hardly surprising, in view of what's happened every
der Mouse> other time the issue has come up.

In short, that should have been a clue that it's not ready for prime-time
yet!

frank-> Call it whatever you like, but a decision has been taken about the rc
frank-> system.

Without consideration for probably about 47% of the user community (if you
have numbers that differ from this, anybody, please post them).

Could we even get an open poll on this as for pro vs. con, one vote per
person?  I'm willing to be open-minded on this as much as I have bitched
about it, so I'm not going to condemn anyone who thinks it is A Good Thing.

Please don't do runlevels, at least not in the braindead way that SysV/Linux
do them </shudder>.

der Mouse> Anyone for Yet Another fragmentation?

NO!  I don't think it would be particularly conducive to either party.

				--*greywolf;
--
BSD: The Power of Code.