>> I want to see a day where I never ever install an OS that I can't
>> look at the source to without signing away my ability to write free
>> code on that machine for the next 7 years, this is complete crapola.

> Save the world!  Contribute to NetBSD!  B-)

> Seriously, that only happens if people contribute -- code, answering
> questions, hardware to port to, perhaps even money.  The project
> works, so far, largely because of the two machines that Chris has
> personally devoted to it, and because I spend far, far too much time
> working on it.  Other people need to get more involved.

I'd like to...but how?  I have gotten the feeling that there is no
functioning back-channel for contributing stuff.  Specifically,

I wrote PT_SYSCALL stuff for the SPARC and posted it to current-users
_and_ sent it directly to deraadt...and as of the latest sup I have,
all that's happened is that he's committed my ptrace(2) manpage, which
describes it (and an old version of it, at that, even though I sent him
the latest ptrace.2 along with the PT_SYSCALL patches).  The code
itself isn't there.

I've also noticed that my patch to gcc for -Wformat versus %qd was only
partially applied (or perhaps was not actually applied, but recreated
by someone else basd on my patch); in particular, for some reason the
pedwarn call and its controlling if were skipped, so that -ansi
-pedantic won't see anything wrong with the (non-ANSI) %qd.

I wrote a replacement libcrypt that does reasonably secure password
hashing in an exportable manner, and that's compatible with old hashed
passwords if you have DES-based hashing code available to boot.  I
posted about its availability (may even have posted the code, I'd have
to check archives to be sure) to current-users and heard nary a peep of
interest.

I added tickadj to /kern.  Someone (cgd, I think) said it belonged in
sysctl, which I can sort of understand, but can't understand why that
would be cause to be uninterested in having it in kernfs.

I added an option for modifying the NFS mount options used when
mounting the root when booting diskless.  Nobody expressed any
interest.  Perhaps I'm the only person who cares....

I added an option so the SPARC console terminal emulator comes up in
white-on-black mode.  deraadt flatly refused to have anything to do
with it, telling me there was no need for it (presumably meaning he had
no need for it, ignoring the need I clearly must have had in order to
have been prompted to do it) and that it would add too much maintenance
complexity (the patch simply adds five lines: one blank, one #ifdef,
one #endif, and two lifted directly from the switch-to-white-on-black
code in the emulator).

Perhaps it's just that deraadt and I grate on one another, and I've
simply been unfortunate that I've been dealing largely with him 'cause
it's a SPARC that I'm working with NetBSD on.  (I certainly found cgd
helpful when I was trying to track down the trouble with nullfs and
device special files.)  But I am getting the feeling that my attempts
to help are actively unwanted.  Or is it that I'm not being properly
supplicatory?  I've been _trying_ to phrase things in ways that don't
insult or threaten egos; is that not enough?

					der Mouse

			    mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu