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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.bayarea.net!baygate.bayarea.net!thorpej From: thorpej@baygate.bayarea.net (Jason R. Thorpe) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.security.unix Subject: Re: *BSD* Security WWW/Mailing List? Date: 1 May 1997 02:32:03 GMT Organization: George's NetBSD answer man Lines: 46 Message-ID: <5k8vb3$lj7@news.bayarea.net> References: <5jdgaf$34i@cynic.portal.ca> <DERAADT.97Apr20113509@zeus.pacifier.com> <5jeb2b$ata@cynic.portal.ca> <5jejsr$g22$1@threadway.teeny.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: baygate.bayarea.net Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6792 comp.unix.bsd.misc:3124 comp.security.unix:34181 In article <5jejsr$g22$1@threadway.teeny.org>, Jason Downs <downsj@threadway.teeny.org> wrote: >Imagine, if NetBSD actually made their CVS tree publically available like >everyone else, we could reference specific NetBSD commits and others >could go find commit histories based on the NetBSD RCS IDs. > >But, hey, you don't make such information available. That is a blatant lie. All of the NetBSD commit messages are available in on the source-changes@netbsd.org mailing list or in the archive of that mailing list available on ftp.netbsd.org. ...and to address the "CVS tree publically available" bit... There are several technical reasons why the NetBSD CVS repository hasn't been made "public" in the fashion that "everone else's" has... Not the least of which is the desire to maintain private development branches in the source tree before a set of changes is ready for public consumption. And, of course, when a project is as old as NetBSD (over 4 years, now), there is the occasional snafu ... forgotten copyright ... typo in license, etc. It happens. You fix it it the next revision. Do you allow the revisions w/ the goofs in them out the door? Not. These two examples present an interesting problem with the reconstruction of revisions, due to the way deltas are stored in RCS files. Dealing with these technical issues is non-trivial (indeed, several NetBSD developers have been discussing possible solutions to the problem for some time). ...though, I must ask... are the gcc RCS files available to the public? How about binutils? I'm not aware that they are. I'm sure there are a lot a free software projects that don't export their RCS files to the public. "Everyone else" is sort of a stretch. (And to address something Mr. de Raadt said earlier about NetBSD's s3kr1t pact with USL...) Before making accusations, try thinking about legitimate reasons for certain actions, rather than basing them on some paranoid conspiracy theory. It's not very becoming. -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@bayarea.net>