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Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 03:20:41 -0500 (EST)
From: ADRIAN Filipi-Martin <adrian@ubergeeks.com>
Reply-To: Adrian Filipi-Martin <adrian@ubergeeks.com>
To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
cc: netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG,
        FreeBSD advocacy list <FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>,
        advocacy@openbsd.org
Subject: Re: Merging Net/Free/Open-BSD together against Linux
In-Reply-To: <19981127162648.R682@freebie.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981127030245.27809B-100000@lorax.ubergeeks.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Fri, 27 Nov 1998, Greg Lehey wrote:

> On Friday, 27 November 1998 at  0:49:30 -0500, ADRIAN Filipi-Martin wrote:
> > On Fri, 27 Nov 1998, ADRIAN Filipi-Martin wrote:
> >
> >> 	So, again, who would like to participate on such a project,
> >> scanctioned by a *BSD core team, or not?  The michanics of the process are
> >> fairly straight forward, but they are time intensive.
> >
> > 	Just an addendum to my previous message.  If you think you would
> > be interested in helping on such a task, send me your address off-line.
> > I'll save them.
> >
> > 	If there is suficcient interest/manpower to make it more than a
> > one-man show, I'll set up a 3-way CVS mirror at UVa or maybe a local ISP.
> > We can tag an initial starting point and start merging into one of the
> > three trees.  If this bears fruit we can then re-merge any recent changes
> > and make it a new baseline for userland.  (Yes, there is undoubtedly a lot
> > more to consider, but it's a start.)
> >
> > 	I think minimally, there would need to be two people from each
> > group.  I am best counted as a FreeBSD'er.  Are there five others?
> 
> Count me out.  I don't think this is a worthwhile effort.  Discuss
> things, maintain more communication, try to keep things pointing in
> the direction, sure.  But your efforts aren't going to give us a
> unified userland: they're more likely to create a fourth version.

	Well, that would be hard to do without a kernel.  ;-)  

	Avoiding a new *BSD is one big reason why I want to constrain such
an effort to non-kernel code. 

	What do you think would increase the liklihood for such an effort
to succeed?  

	It's not that I think such work should be done in secrecy without
any comminication with the developers at large.  I personally would want
to work in a faily autonomous manner so as to not be directly branched off
of a particular CVS projects repository.  But that could just be me.  

	The basic reason I'm pursuing the notion of userland unification
is that I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the egos are smaller and less
likely to be a problem outside of the kernel.  It would also leave the
respective camps free to have their own add-ons.  This would be one way to
reduce the effort spend tracking what the other groups are doing for the
entire distribution.

	I could see things where 90% of userland, and 90% of the ports
(not packages) could be lumped together on a single CD, that could be
included in each OS's distribution.  The particular flavor would provide
it's kernel sources, system binaries and other bits that are truly kernel
specific.

	Anyway, it's just an idea.  It's one I feel I could get behind.

	Adrian
--
[ adrian@ubergeeks.com -- Ubergeeks Consulting -- http://www.ubergeeks.com/ ]