> 
> 
> Sorry to quote most of what David Miller wrote, but I must agree.
> The whole thing that transpired totally transcends foolish and goes right
> into downright stupid.

I agree completely..  I was one of the ones that fanned flames on the 
last go around of this topic..  I hate to say it, but I just don't spend
much time on NetBSD any more because I feel that my efforts in the past
have largely been a complete waste of my time.  I helped get the 4/110
running NetBSD, and it took months before that work made it into the
regular distribution, primarily due to politics.  At the present moment,
I don't even know if the code that's in the regular distribution works.  
I doubt it.  If things had been resolved with Theo, we'd have a nice 
new SCSI driver (THAT WORKS), support for SCSI on platforms like the 
4/100 series etc and so forth.  Instead, we have very little to show
for the last 6 months.  Theo and I worked on various improvements and
new framebuffer drivers, I'm willing to bet that none of them are 
in -current code.   

I like working with Theo, he gets things done.  He works so fast
that I have a hard time keeping up with him :-) 

I take satisfaction on working on things for my own benefit, but I just
can't justify spending the time helping debug and write code 
that will never see the light of day.  Heck, I've got lots of other stuff
to spend my time on.  

The way I see it, if core doesn't care enough to do 
whatever it takes to get Theo's contributions, then I don't care enough
to use, promote, or contribute to NetBSD ever again.  There are plenty
of other projects out there with less political problems that I could be 
working on.  If I liked politics, I'd be working for the government 
as a state official not staying up in the lab late at night writing 
and debugging code. 

> 
> NetBSD wasn't supposed to be about attitudes, it was supposed to be about
> putting a port on a bunch of machines.  Something got out of hand
> and misappropriated and mistreated, and now we have Theo sitting out
> there in La-La land waiting for a line back in.

Ditto.  
  
> I would implore that whomever in core is keeping him out to re-evaluate
> the situation.  I hear rumours floating around that supposedly this kind
> of thing is in progress, but that one of the core members might be hurt
> by letting Theo back in.  I find this amazingly hard to believe, and I
> strongly disagree with the rationale contained therein (which appears
> to be nil).

This garbage has been going on for months and months and months now.
I got sick of it a long time ago.

> While I've gotten a few snarls back from Theo on occasion, I've found
> his expertise to be more competent than most, and he helped me get my
> ELC up and running in the early stages of the game.
> 
> Please don't sacrifice quality for the sake of some ego, and I don't care
> *how* you want to justify it and prove that it isn't ego at all, because
> it is.  If you're not doing work for whatever reason, it's either software
> logistics, hardware logistics or ego getting in your way.

No kidding, I find it amazing that people think you have to 
"Love your fellow coder" in order to work on a group project.  
I know of very few situations where everyone in a group project gets along,
the only thing hold them together is the common goal.  Looks to me like
NetBSD has lost sight of that goal.  Maybe nobody gives a rip if it runs on
Sparc hardware, maybe they figure "who cares if it doesn't work on Suns, 
at least we don't have to listen to Theo"
Maybe I should just save my voice, it didn't help last time, doubt
it'll make any difference this time.  Probably be censored anyway :-)

> Point:  Far off, but still, many software houses refused to put improvements
> into code not because they didn't work, but because they were "Not Invented
> Here" (thus began the order of the Knights Who Say "NIH!").  Was it a hard-
> ware or software problem?  NO!  It was all ego.  "We don't want it because
> some lowly peon somewhere else invented it and could show us up."
> 
> So what's the point?  Theo seemed more than willing to make amends for what 
> he had done.  He was bypassing *his* _ego_ for sake of _work_ on the project.
> 
> I would strongly recommend that core do the same.  I'd hate to see
> the SPARC port die.

Its been dead now for several months.. :-)
It was dead the last time we had a flamewar.

It'll probably stay dead unless someone finds a clone of Theo
that's got the same knowledge, time, and happens to be Politically
Correct enough for the job... :-)

> Your local friendly rabble-rouser and underdog supporter,
> 
> 					--*greywolf;
> 

Frustrated would-be-again NetBSD contributor, 
   John 

-- 
*       John Stone - Computer Science Graduate Student / Unix Admin       *
*       University of Missouri - Rolla    Office: 208 MCS, 341-6434       *
*                           Unix Is Good For You                          *