*BSD News Article 14957


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!convex!convex!cs.utexas.edu!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!mcsun!sun4nl!eur.nl!pk
From: pk@cs.few.eur.nl (Paul Kranenburg)
Subject: Re: So you say you want an interim release of 386bsd? (What to do?)
Message-ID: <1993Apr21.193218.5724@cs.few.eur.nl>
Sender: news@cs.few.eur.nl
Reply-To: pk@cs.few.eur.nl
Organization: Erasmus University Rotterdam
References: <1qvpc9$1e8@agate.berkeley.edu> <1r067g$915@lobster.sid.mcet.edu> 	<CGD.93Apr19235932@eden.CS.Berkeley.EDU> <C5sCvr.3G1@unx.sas.com> 	<CGD.93Apr20124457@gaia.CS.Berkeley.EDU> <GENE.93Apr21081836@stark.uucp>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 19:32:18 GMT
Lines: 36

In <GENE.93Apr21081836@stark.uucp> gene@cs.sunysb.edu!stark (Gene Stark) writes:

>Arrgggh!  OK, I just read this whole thread, and I wasn't upset before but
>now I am.  When the NetBSD 0.8 announcement came out I saw that many of the
>patchkit people were acknowledged and I thought "Good!  The patchkit will
>follow NetBSD, and probably most of the active kernel hacker community on the
>net will follow."  This made me happy because I agree with the goal of
>turning 386bsd into a stable system.  But now it looks like NetBSD and
>the patchkit are going to be separate forks.  I predict another bifurcation
>at such time if/when 386bsd 0.2 is released, because if the rumor mill is
>accurate, it is going to be an experimental system with many changes, and
>probably moving to that will be a giant step backwards in terms of stability.
>I think many of the 386bsd users who post here don't want that.

>I'd just like to send out an appeal for those who have been active in
>working on 386bsd to rally 'round one version, so that the support doesn't
>get too diluted.  At first I thought NetBSD would be this version, but
>after reading this thread it looks like I'm going to stay with the patchkit
>for now.

One of the problems for "active workers" with 386bsd 0.2 is that one can only
wait for it and that's not what can be counted as active work. On the other
hand, any number of people working on a project of any sort at a site as
distributed as the world, is bound to lead to bifurcations at some stage. In
this particular case the split-up has only been hastened by the fact that
personal begrudgements threaten to become a main guide in the development
of an operating system. That won't do enthusiasm any good.

As to the different (more generic) name, I like the change since it hints,
if only in name, at the possibility of supporting other platforms. This will
help with keeping portability up on an acceptable level.

-pk

Remember, it's just a fork(), nobody got executed() yet.