> Out of curiosity, is it going to be another year and a half before the
> next release? :-)

It hasn't been a year and a half, though if you'd like us to wait that
long, i don't think we'd be willing to accomodate you.

NetBSD 0.9 was released on 8/23/1993.  I know that date very well,
because it also happened to be the start of the Fall '93 semester
at UCB...  8-)

That's not even a year ago.

> It has been kind of a pain the last few months,
> telling people how great NetBSD has become, but when they ask how to
> install the good stuff, having to give them complicated, and ever-
> more-impossible to achieve, destructions on how to get upgraded to
> current.  I really want to be able to point my friends and associates
> at a stable release as great as 1.0, and being able to let them just
> go at it.  So, I guess what I'm saying is, can we make the next major
> release a little less ambitious, and, say, not more than six months
> from the previous release (1.0)?

The reasons that this release have taken so long _aren't_ really
'ambitious goals' -- as i've explained before (i.e. "before today,"
and "before, today"), the main reason for this release taking so
long to get out was that we didn't want to rush a release out, around
april or may, then have to get another one out _not_, and, for various
reasons, it was impractical to do.

> I'm not asking you to lower your
> sites -- simply to take the leaps in small increments.  

The big problem with getting this release out the door was upgrading
the "tainted" code in Net/2 to the "free" code in 4.4-Lite.
That was no small undertaking, and one we _had_ to do.

> I think it
> would really help make it usable for the people who can't quit grasp
> upgrading to current, especially in the later stages.  This has really
> been my only beef with the NetBSD development, thus far.

This is the reason i started doing binary snapshots -- to make life
easier for people upgrading to -current.  As you know, however, that's
_not_ a substitute for a new release, because:
	(1) it's hard to install
	(2) it can be a maintenance nightmare.

I started doing binary snapshots for the i386 because i _knew_ we
had little choice about getting a release done immediately, but
i wanted to make life easier for those upgrading.  *sigh*

"there are only 36 hours in a day." 8-)

> That said, please understand, overall, I think NetBSD-1.0 is the best
> small-system unix available, bar none.  You guys have done one helluva
> job!  Thanks for all your dedication.

thank you.  8-)  we're not done yet.  it's still beta.  8-)

> >This was probably discussed at the NetBSD BOF, but for those
> >of us who couldn't make it and didn't see the report on the BOF (was it
> >ever posted?), it'd be nice to have a list of things we can look forward
> >to/work towards. :-)
> 
> Yes, we've heard about all these people who went to see the eleet BOF,
> but nobody posted a detailed summary!!  Inquiring minds still want to
> know!  Would someone please be so kind as to take a couple hours and
> sit down and write us up a report of the event?  We'd all appreciate
> it, I'm sure. :-)

the summary has made it out the door now, i guess; it was actually
done a bit ago, but we wanted to review it, make sure everything was
correct, etc.  unfortunately, there were more pressing things to do,
so it got delayed a while, then finally kicked out with little review.
"c'est la vie."  If you can't prioritize your inputs, you'll always
freeze when you see the headlights...  8-)


chris

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