>>> ["without users, what is the point?"]
>> I play chess.  I play go.  I play the piano.  I read SF.  What is
>> the point of any of those?

>> Insofar as it's not incompatible with having a neat system to play
>> with, I'd like to see [NetBSD] have users - but I am *not*
>> interested in desktop share at the cost of making it a system I no
>> longer enjoy playing with, or I'd be off using Windows.

> Why can't you have both?

Because the target "markets" are so drastically different, almost
antithetical.

Large desktop share means catering to people who don't know computers
and don't want to, and are better off being kept away from the real
machine.  The people who don't want rope because they're liable to hang
themselves.

And that's almost exactly what the geek hobbyist types loathe.  My idea
of an OS distribution is a few .tar.gz files and a README.  Yet one of
the topics that seems to concern people msot is sysinst, which is
almost *designed* to keep people away from that sort of installation.

I did a sysinst install once.  Once.  To set up the first NetBSD/alpha
install I've done.  I probably *could* have done it "by hand", but as
the install docs said how to use sysinst, but gave no indication of how
to do it any other way (basically, the "README" of the previous
paragraph wasn't there), I just held my nose and figured I'd torch the
sysinst install once I had a system up enough to do a "make
distribution" install onto another disk.  Which is exactly what I did.

> Why can't any BSD flavor, or Linux for that matter, curry the favor
> of people who will also develop applications?

Because the people who would have to do the favor-currying are people
who have no use for "applications".  (Again, IMO.)

> If it's just to hack on, well, fine.  Perhaps I'll start a flavor
> that is what is pretends to be -- HobbyBSD.

I know you tacked on a smiley (which I snipped)...but, well, I'm not
sure there should be one there.  I've considered more or less that
myself on occasion.  Unfond though I am of the idea of *yet another*
split in the BSD world, it does seem to me that it might be a good idea
to have an OS that not only exists as an OS-hacker hobbyist's system
but makes that its advertised raison d'etre.  I've occasionally felt
that NetBSD was created that way but didn't admit it, though of course
I wasn't there at the time and it really doesn't matter so much what
the intent then was as what Core's vision now is.

	Late night ramblings from a tired and depressed mouse,

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
		     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B