> As much as [...], I must respond to your take of Yet Another
> Fragmentation with a resounding NO.

I'm not really surprised.

Well, it's probably going to produce much-needed change in my life, so
it's not all bad.

And of course I may prove unable to break the addiction anyway. :-(

> It's not something I need that badly to fragment.

For me, it's either that or stop having computers as a hobby as well as
a career.  If I'm running computers for a hobby, they *will* be running
something I enjoy playing with.

And as I've said several time, split-up rc files don't qualify.

Your suggestion (in another message) of maintaining a separate rc
script is a possibility, but see my next point.

> [S]eeing as I have a hell of a lot of effort and time invested in
> NetBSD, as you do,

Yeah, but NetBSD has just evidenced a willingness to totally screw me
over without even so much as a by-your-leave - or even a we're-sorry,
despite having the lack of such repeatedly pointed out.  Why should I
throw good time-and-effort after bad?  Admittedly, I'm not a major
contributor, and logically I can't expect the Project to care much
about me.  But this willingness to completely ignore my desires,
unsurprising though it may be, severely dismotivates me to sink any
further effort into NetBSD.

Logically, I know I'm simply a casualty of being far from the norm, and
everyone going for the numbers and niche markets be damned.  This is
really whence my suggestion of yet another fragmentation: an attempt to
find out if the niche I fit in is large enough to support such a
fragment.  It appears not; there's only one person who's spoken up here
in support of my position, and not even that one is interested in such
a fragment.  (NetBSD used to fit it well.  The fit has been getting
worse and worse.)

To pull a later message fragment up here to be more cohesive,

>> Anyone for Yet Another fragmentation?
> NO!  I don't think it would be particularly conducive to either
> party.

It would help me, in that it would mean I'd have a system I could enjoy
running.

Of course, I mostly have that now.  The question is really wondering
whether that niche I've talked about is large enough to support
maintaining an OS that fits it.  I probably have the skill and
knowledge (or at least ability to acquire the knowledge) to do so
alone, but it would mean sacrificing too much of the rest of my life,
including most of my paying work.  And it's not clear that even then
I'd have enough time to use the result as the base for playing that is
the reason I want it in the first place.

> I will again restate for the record, though:  Those of you who think
> that the UI doesn't have anything to do with what is a BSD system are
> quite WRONG.  The UI, the API and the kernel are all very much linked
> into the definition of an OS.

If I might digress for a moment to reply to Greg Woods' response

< Temporally speaking that's a very narrow view of the world of Unix.
< [...try using V7, AIX, whatever...]  I think you'll come to
< appreciate that "unix" in general has a far deeper meaning that
< transcends all the SysV vs. BSD nonsense.

Yes, it does.  That has little to nothing to do with what greywolf was
saying: that "BSD", whatever it means, definitely includes UI aspects.
I entirely agree with this statement.

>> Call it whatever you like, but a decision has been taken about the
>> rc system.
> Without consideration for probably about 47% of the user community
> (if you have numbers that differ from this, anybody, please post
> them).

Personally, I am hoping that major howls will be heard promptly after
the first release that includes this stuff.

I don't really expect that to happen.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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