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From: Todd Whitesel <toddpw@best.com>
Message-Id: <199811290635.WAA28011@shell17.ba.best.com>
Subject: Re: Merging Net/Free/Open-BSD together against Linux
In-Reply-To: <19981127162648.R682@freebie.lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Nov 27, 98 04:26:48 pm"
To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey)
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 22:35:33 -0800 (PST)
Cc: adrian@ubergeeks.com, art@stacken.kth.se, alicia@internetpaper.com,
        netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG, FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG,
        advocacy@openbsd.org
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> > 	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.)
...
> 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.

Translated into something more constructive:

An attempt to produce a "unified" tree first and then get everyone to
switch over to it later is a bad idea. It does seem to be working with
EGCS, but only because Stallman capitulated in order to prevent a full
mutiny. I don't think we want a repeat of that over here.

Provide a tree that people can use to merge individual userland programs,
and publish status reports on how each individual program is doing: whether
it is unified, and which of the 3 projects has adopted the unified version.

It is vastly more important that the _easy_ merges get done than that _all_
the merges get done.

I suspect that the reason most of the past projects failed is because too
many people refused to even _start_ on them until they were certain that
the entire stated goal of the project could be completed. Screw that!! A
partial success still has much benefit for everyone.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com