To David --
	Me, too.

To Larry --
	I hope the *BSD world is able to work these things out.

To everyone else --
	Since I only am subscribed to port-sparc, I know absolutely
nothing about what happened.  However, my 4/280 is running SunOS 4.1.3
at this moment, because (a) there are no SMD disk drivers for NetBSD,
and (b) the si driver (for the "Sun-3 SCSI" VME board) uses programmed
I/O instead of DMA, and gets 100 KB/s (at 100% CPU usage) vs. SunOS'
1MB/s with very low CPU usage.  Fixing either problem (and in another
month, when I have some time, I may try) would probably get me back to
NetBSD.  (Please don't interpret this as a criticism of the people who
wrote the present SCSI driver, because they did far more than work
than I, and even they claimed it was still "developement" quality.)
However, I'd _really_ like to have a usable 4.x BSD system with free
source.

Alas, the *BSD community has splintered over various political
problems.  Perhaps hackers write good code because they refuse to
compromise and deliver the bloated solution that contains everyone's
ideas, but clearly this can be taken too far.  The Linux community
(which I ignore as much as I can) seems to have handled the people
issues involved with a large distributed project much better than the
*BSD community.  For a volunteer effort, managing people is absolutely
critical, and I think it's a real shame to see the (Net/Free)BSD
split, not to mention the split from 386BSD.  (I watched all of these
from a very long way off, and have no desire to rekindle any of the
debate.)

Please, ladies and gentlemen:  can we stop the useless political
p*ssing contests and try to make NetBSD the best OS for Sparcs,
including Sun4's (and Sun4c's, and Sun4m's)?  On legal issues
(i.e. copyrights) can people calm down, take a deep breath, and try to
reach a mutually agreeable compromise?  (And remember that there's
more than 1 point of view?)  At least one Sparc owner will be very,
very appreciative if you can.

Axioms to live by:
1) Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by
miscommunication.

2) It requires at least 2 people to miscommunicate.

Now I'll be quiet and go away.  My time over the next month is very
limited, but if there's anything I can do, I'll be glad to help.....

Drew Dean
<ddean@cs.princeton.edu>	609-258-1797 (office)