At 11:18 PM -0800 2001/1/18, Greywolf wrote:

>  When there was a statement made about "hazing", it was made to sound
>  as though it covered both NetBSD and FreeBSD.  Observing the ping-pong
>  match in progress, I think I can safely say that the newbies in NetBSD
>  are treated with much less of a hazing than they are in FreeBSD.  Why
>  this is, I'm not sure.

	The ping-pong match currently in progress is in regard to certain 
people who have apparently been around in the FreeBSD community for 
quite some time, but who have personalities such that many within the 
community consider them to be, at best eccentric, and at worst 
complete and total whackos that aught to be locked up.

	This has nothing to do with "hazing" since it is not directed at 
a person who is new to the process, and it is not coming exclusively 
(or even primarily) from people who have been around longer, and feel 
that the hazing is not yet complete.


	If you've been around in the BSD community for a while, you 
should recognize situations like this, and be able to distinguish 
them from the "hazing" that newcomers are subject to.


	Now, if you've been in the NetBSD community for a while, I 
suspect that part of the reason why there appears to be less hazing 
going on over there is that there are a much wider variety of 
hardware platforms that NetBSD runs on, and many of the potentially 
abrasive and abusive people tend to be more isolated in 
hardware-specific sub-groups within NetBSD.

	As such, these abrasive and potentially abusive people tend to 
interact with each other less, thus resulting in less mud-throwing 
matches, and probably less hazing as well -- there's just too much 
porting work to go around and not enough time spent by enough 
abrasive people who are more likely to have similar skills and are 
likely to get put (or to put themselves) into situations where they 
frequently conflict with others.


	Speaking as a relative newcomer to FreeBSD, I definitely feel 
that there is a certain amount of hazing that goes on.  If you want 
to contribute to the project, you're expected to write code.  At the 
very least, if you want to contribute to the project, you're expected 
to be able to read code, so that you can point out what is wrong, 
although you might not be able to fix it.  If you can't even read 
code, you're most definitely a second-class (or even third-class) 
citizen.

	The phrase "Use the Source, Luke!" is frequently used, and when 
the talents you have do not lend itself to doing this, quite 
frequently you get blown off.  I know that this has happened to me.


	I'm here to tell you that not every FreeBSD user is a good 
systems administrator (or any kind of a systems administrator, for 
that matter).  Likewise, not every FreeBSD user is a good programmer 
(or any kind of a programmer).  You shouldn't have to be a programmer 
to be able to make material contributions to the project.

	While I believe that this attitude is slowly in the process of 
being changed, I do not believe that this process of change is 
anywhere close to being complete.  Yes, people with other talents are 
in the process of becoming more appreciated (e.g., technical writers 
to do the documentation, etc...), but this process is not anywhere 
near as far along as it should be.

--
   These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy
======================================================================
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be>