At 09:30 AM 1/19/2001, John Baldwin wrote:

>You missed my point that this isn't FreeBSD specific however.  

No, I didn't; that's why I drew the analogy to a fraternity!

>People are
>inherently selfish and are always going to act in a manner that serves their
>self interest.  The fact that people will thus be drawn towards people with
>similar views, etc. should not come as a surprise.  As has also been noted in
>this thread, not everyone has the same exact views, but different people react
>differently to differing views.  The fact is that you appear at least to be
>rather stubborn in your views, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Persistence is often an important virtue. If I didn't think I could
contribute something to FreeBSD in particular and the BSDs in general
despite the social problems, I'd be long gone! As it is, I got the
BSDs a track at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference (which reminds me:
they just issued their call for papers -- submit things now!) and
have published many papers and articles that have drawn attention to 
the BSDs and their business-friendly approach to licensing. 

[SNIP]

>Also, you missed that I countered that there isn't "hazing" as it were.  To say
>that the fact that people are given commit bits because they work on stuff that
>is stored in the repository is akin to saying that a company "hazes" because it
>doesn't hire music majors for engineering jobs.  Such a claim would be
>ludicrous.

That's not the sort of "hazing" I'm talking about. What I *am* talking
about is the constant stream of defamatory comments hurled, via the
mailing lists, at those who think outside the box. And not just at me;
I've seen Terry and a few others take a lot of heat as well.

--Brett