*BSD News Article 89636


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From: Niklas Hallqvist <niklas@appli.se>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.security.unix
Subject: Re: Careless integration of others' code (WAS Re: Why no addusr?)
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 11:39:46 +0100
Organization: Applitron Datasystem AB
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Message-ID: <33083572.41C6@appli.se>
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Hi!

If anyone haven't guessed it already, I'm the Niklas that checked in the
alpha/locore.s merge that contained the __OpenBSD__ consdition.  I must
confess I feel quite stupid about missing this change while doing the merge
but I have a couple of points in my defense.

I	The amount of changes done in this commit sweep was stunning, we talk
	about several 100K of diffs.  This in turn was due to the release
	lock on NetBSD sources that made post-1.2 changes be major.  I respect
	NetBSD's right to put such a lock on their tree, but for me it makes
	the merge quite a painful job where things get easily missed because
	of trust.

II	I trust NetBSD code.  I think I still do, although my idealistic world
	view might have taken a hit.

III	I trust Cgd to be a much better alpha coder than me, and I don't even
	really try to question his assembly code.  The point of OpenBSD/alpha
	is *not* to be different from NetBSD in the MD parts, but to bring the
	alternative BSD-based OS to this platform.  An OS is a lot more than
	the MD parts of a port.

IV	With respect to the maturity of code that goes into the tree, there
	is no guarantee that a current tree will build on all platforms.  To
	my knowledge this isn't true in NetBSD either.  I actually thought the
	non-booting situation to be a transient misfeature in the NetBSD tree
	too and decided to recheck in a little while.  You see, there should be
	no reason that OpenBSD won't boot if NetBSD does.  Or so I thought,
	anyway.

V	The delay of getting this debugged and fixed was due to me being very
	busy on other things, and that noone reported this as a major problem
	for them which made it low-priority.  I had no idea the delay would be
	a reason to critizice me.  If I'd known I had jumped to the debug
	session much earlier.

I won't comment on my way of tracking NetBSD/alpha is inducing security problems.
You be the judge if my tracking is unreasonable and complain to me if you think
that my work is inferior to what you expect from OpenBSD.  I'm sure we can find
a solution.

Anyway, that is my defense.  I hope that such an issue won't ever crop up again,
that was the third time i really, really questioned the fact that I want to be
part of the kernel hacker's community.  I love to hack, but things like this
really makes me very sad.

Now I will crawl back under my carpet, hoping I never will make such a fool of
myself again.  Thanks for listening.

Niklas
-- 
Niklas Hallqvist       Phone: +46-(0)31-40 75 00  Home: +46-(0)31-41 93 95
Applitron Datasystem   Fax:   +46-(0)31-83 39 50  Home: +46-(0)31-41 93 96
Molndalsvagen 95       Email: niklas@appli.se     GSM:  +46-(0)70-714 10 35
S-412 63  GOTEBORG     WWW:   <A HREF="http://www.appli.se/niklas/">Here</A>
Sweden		       IRC:   niklas (#NetBSD)