On 19-Jan-01 Brett Glass wrote:
> At 03:58 PM 1/18/2001, Kris Kirby wrote:
> 
>>No offense Brett, but I imagine some people are thinking the same thing
>>about you.
>>
>>(Before you start to rip into me, realize that I do not have you
>>kill-filed, unlike others. Hint Hint.)
> 
> I'm glad you don't. But your statement is not fair. Unlike ESR,
> I care about ethics and am not merely trying to promote my own 
> financial success at my colleagues' expense.
> 
> As for the kill files: this is part of the hazing/shunning that
> was alluded to in earlier messages in this thread. It's a power
> game.

Actually, that is because many people have noticed that you tend to say the
same thing over and over, and since they don't agree with you, they'd just as
soon not see the same thing that they disagree with over and over.  As a
committer, I can safely say that no hazing took place for me to become a
committer.  I know that hazing is and is not:  I was in both a military college
and a fraternity at school. :)  What is true is that FreeBSD is rather bottom
heavy (lots of coders).  However, part of this derives from its nature: the
reason people are committers is because they can add something to the
repository.  Things like articles in magazines aren't stored in the CVS
repository, so they don't lend themselves to gaining commit access as it were. 
Neither does QA type work.  However, these items are just as essential as the
stuff that is in the repo.  One thing that would be helpful is to find ways to
reward this work similar to the ways that we reward people who submit code. 
For example, a @FreeBSD.org mail address and/or homepage.  Hopefully, such
would encourage peopel to do stuff like QA, which we sorely need more of.

However, there is one way in which FreeBSD is kind of like a frat, and that is
that the community attracts people that are somewhat similar.  This is true for
almost any organization.  When a company hires people, it wants to hire people
who fit in with the existing culture, not someone who will just cause constant
uproars.  I'm afraid, Brett, that some people find you to be at odds with large
portions of the rest of the community, which is why you haven't garnered as
wide acceptance as you would like.

> --Brett

-- 

John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
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"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/