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To: Todd Whitesel <toddpw@best.com>
Cc: netbsd-advocacy@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: Sun jumping on Linux bandwagon 
From: Herb Peyerl <hpeyerl@beer.org>
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Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 08:33:28 -0700

Todd Whitesel <toddpw@best.com>  wrote:
 > Everyone I talk to at work who knows anything about free unix and actually
 > recognizes "NetBSD" generally has a blase' attitude towards it, and repeats
 > some line about how either (a) core are assholes, or (b) they're so quiet are
 > they dead or just in a coma.
 > 
 > I think a lot of the perceived ennui comes from some very obvious signs that
 > certain "simple" things just aren't getting done (my opinions only BTW):
 > 
 >     1. It seems like a lot of newbie contributed PR's die in committee. This
[snip]
 > 
 >     2. Outside developers don't care about helping to debug compile errors in
 >     -current. They would be much happier if we could provide regular non-DOA
 >     snapshots, so that when they have a free week, they sync up, hack away,
[snip]
 > 
 >     3. The projects page on the web site doesn't appear to get updated much.
[snip]

*chuckle*... So first you make the claim that the general perception is that
core are 'assholes' or 'apathetic' and then list a few things that are wrong. 
While listing the things that are wrong, I had trouble seeing how any of them
are related to 'core' being 'assholes' or 'apathetic'... 

I get the impression you think that 'core' is expected to do all the work
in the project... That it is core's responsibility to respond to every
PR with a 'good work. thanx for helping. we'll get to this PR in good time.'
and that 'core' should update the project pages...

I also see that you're volunteering to do a bunch of stuff... I think this
is great so obviously you're not completely under the perception that it
is a 'core' responsibility to do all these things... 

 >     1. I don't know anything about gnats, but I am willing to learn if it
 >     means helping to see that all new PR's eventually get sent at least one
 >     response at some finite rate (even one PR per week is okay at first, as
 >     long as people see _some_ progress!!). I am certainly not the best person
 >     to judge most of the PR's, but I can sure as hell send a form email to
 >     people in a few minutes every few days, and search the database for old
 >     PR's to see if something can now be done about them. I think this is
 >     currently done for the PR's that can be solved easily, but for the hard
 >     ones we appear to drop the ball from the outsider's perspective and I'd
 >     like to find a way to prevent that.

cool! go for it!

 >     3. Here I think that just having someone massage source-changes into a
 >     daily digest would be a good start. I can do this too but I'd need to
 >     bone up on HTML again. Also I would like to have a version of this page
 >     for public projects that are happening outside of the tree. It seems to
 >     me that just having an email aliases "netbsd-progress@netbsd.org" would be
 >     great, so one does not have to troll _all_ the mailing lists to collect
 >     this stuff. Plus the pages should sort their info by date, so inactive
 >     projects go to the bottom and projects can fight for exposure in the top
 >     10 spots or something :)

Great! Build something and if there's general happiness with it, maybe the
www folks will incorporate it into the pages.

You see, it's not really core's place to bless these things and say "yes,
this is part of the great plan of NetBSD!"... Do something and if people
like it, they'll grab it and run with it... If people don't like it, or
no one responds, please don't blame "core".