> Whoa, hold on a moment there.  Sure NetBSD is trying to "do it
> right", but there's got to be a line somewhere that prevents NetBSD
> from changing entirely into a completely alien object.

I think something like this is what I was getting at in my remark about
"go start NetSysV": a change on the order of runlevels turns NetBSD
into an alien OS (at least as far as administration is concerned), one
I'm not at all sure I want to have much to do with.  Part of the reason
I'm here is that it's familiar and friendly and warm-fuzzy.
Contemplating a sharp turn like this, suddenly I feel not warm fuzzies
but cold pricklies.

I've always thought of NetBSD as a relatively niche OS, one that fits
well the people who (like me) are into treating OSes as toys to be
played with, into OS hacking for its own sake.  Loosely speaking, a
research system.  Perhaps it wants to turn into something more
"mainstream", more "a bigger user base (regardless of who) is Good".
And if that's the way core wants NetBSD to go, if that's their metric,
well, they probably can do it.

But they'll probably lose most of that niche.  And IMO they'll lose
what distinguishes them from Linux and FreeBSD, which to me seem to be
doing a good job of serving the "I don't want to have to fuss with tar,
I just want to put the floppy in and it goes" community.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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