Subject: Re: removing packages
To: Simon Burge <simonb@wasabisystems.com>
From: Lord Isildur <mrfusion@vaxpower.org>
List: port-alpha
Date: 11/25/2000 10:27:05
> 
> At the moment, the base system isn't "pkgised" and files have to be
> removed manually.  This will hopefully be fixed soon - someone is
> working on it...

this is not good! this is BSD, the Berkeley Standard Distribution, that means
that those tarballs ARE the closest thing you get to packages, which is 
how it SHOULD be. We don't have to always just be aping what the linux 
people do just because they're doing it. So what if they are more popular 
with the mass of users out there? That does not mean that they are 
better. Moreover, by destroying constantly the simplicity of BSD in favor 
of more popular (and also more complex and stupid) ways of doing things, we
only dilute the superiority that BSD has enjoyed consistently for years. Why
has BSD heretofor been better? because we DIDN'T just keep making BSD like
linux/sysV and pals! now that the style and the pressures of fashion are 
so powerfully pushing US into conformity, we're going to lose all that 
weve worked for by making BSD just another crappy unixlike system, or 
what? We have the best, and to make changes of this kind only reduce the
quality of the system and make us less the best. Development these days
should focus on keeping support current for new hardware, fixing bugs, 
porting some new utils over to the non-base distribution, occasionally 
making a speedeup or improvement in an algorithm somewhere, and 
eliminating security holes or inconsistencies- NOT changing the 
fundamental strcuture of the distribution we inherited from the deities 
of hackerdom at UCB! I was equally disappointed when we started putting 
an rc.d directory in etc! at least we havent gone over completely and 
started using a sysV style init (wouldn't that be the day, that BSD had a 
sysV init? i hope i never see it!) , but at least i and several others 
keep a tarball of our old rc scripts around and the first thing i do when 
i bring up a newer NetBSD is throw away the hideous rc.d and install real 
rc scripts again. Please, don't give in to the pressures of fashion that 
currently make sysV style stuff, linux style stuff in style. If we dilute 
BSD down to being just another crappy unix knock-off, then there's no 
point in surviving, since we'll have killed BSD ourselves! keep it pure! 

Isildur