On Jul 2, 13:18, der Mouse <mouse@Collatz.McRCIM.McGill.EDU> wrote:
> Yeah, I know what you mean.  I am definitely a BSD bigot when it comes
> to the OSes themselves.  But I am getting almost to the point of being

Yes, BSD is nice.

> embarassed to be seen as associated with a few - a very small but
> unfortunately vocal minority - of the people one sees on at least the
> NetBSD lists.

Let's try to dilute the vociferous vocal venom volunteering vasteful
vainglory, then.  (OK, so I cheated a little on the spelling.)

I spoke briefly with der Mouse at the IETF meeting last week, and
mentioned that we are looking for something to take over after StunOS
on SPARC platforms.  NetBSD is an attractive candidate, but it
doesn't feel quite ready for prime time yet; at least in the
'current' flavour, which is the one that feels much more compatible
with whatever, than the current release.  But I trust it will get
there, in which case we would likely want to try to give something
back to the community, one way or another.  Somebody mentioned a WWW
mirror, and at other times (maybe not here) there has been talk about
a publically available 'reference machine'.  I have obvious
misgivings about the latter (like hosting a machine useful for
attacks on other sites) but would be happy to entertain ideas, once
the time is right.

But right now I have to say it is disheartening to see the way there
is a tendency to frivolously fire flames from fortified ... no, there
I go again ... to engage in pointless flame wars from assorted
entrenched positions.  It has also been disheartening to see lengthy
moral and religious discussions about things such as /etc/rc and all
that, where some parties consider the moral high ground the key
issue, ignoring the more pragmatic things at play.  But let's not
rip up in that.

We are not looking for a commercial grade UNIX (heaven help those who
are), but it would be nice to see the community display some of the
characteristics one would want from an OS: flexibility, reliability,
stability, performance, no nasty surprises.  For the simple reason
that partisan politics has no place in professional software
development.  And having spent several years in my previous life in a
company developing the World's Most Heretic Prolog Implementation, I
speak from experience.

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