On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 01:19:22PM +1300, Joel Macklow wrote:
> There is a perception problem I believe. Here are my musings on a few 
> things.

I'll just respond to one, since you mention me by name...  ;-)

> 1. "Of course it runs NetBSD"
> Yup, true. NetBSD runs on everything, but as alluded to by Allen Briggs 
> in the annual report, some of these have been abandoned.  Should they 
> really be promoted?

As Andy Ruhl noted, this abandonment largely affects people who
might be using the port.  It takes a bit of energy from folks to
update them here or there for global changes, but it's not really
a significant amount of work.  What's missing, in some cases, is
the active development and testing on a given platform.

Our portability is worth promoting, and you mention good reasons
why it is.  Unfortunately (as discussed to death earlier on this
list), it's often the only thing that people think of when they
think of NetBSD.

Some of your ideas are certainly good ones.  Unfortunately, I've
found that some are pretty hard to act on.  Current systems can be
quite complex.  Without vendor support and adequate documentation,
it's hard to make headway on them.

In any case, one thing that we can almost always use is more willing
hands.  I encourage folks to get involved.  Another bit of FUD is
that we're developing in some kind of cathedral.  We're not.

To paraphrase my comments in the annual meeting,

	If you love NetBSD, get involved!  Do your share to nurture it!

-allen

-- 
                  Use NetBSD!  http://www.netbsd.org/