On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 12:23:44AM +0530, Mayuresh Kathe wrote:

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> Its good to know that Ted did indeed try to scratch an itch of his and

> laid down some ground work for future developers to take it beyond its

> basic level.

> But, it would have been *nicer* if Ted had put in some more of his

> time and effort to complete what he started.

> Also, we don't get to use his code for FREE, I suppose most of the

> users *buy* CD sets.

This is an outrageous comment.  You can not expect anyone to do anything

for you.  That simply is not how this world works.  You can wish for

things all day long but that will not make it so.  What will make it so

is by spending huge amounts of time and effort.  He put both in and got

it to a point that was good enough for him.  You can not expect anything

more than that.  This really is where the OpenBSD "shut-up-and-hack"

mentality comes from.  Who are you to tell Ted what to do?
Would I like rthreads?  sure I would!  I even contributed to the code

that's how bad I want it.  But I can and will not ask Ted to do anything

beyond what he wants to invest on it.
Buying the CDs keeps the project going.  Ted does not get paid or

benefit otherwise from the project.  In fact he shows up at hackathons

and invests significant amounts of his own money to do so.  You are

insulting not just him but everyone in the OpenBSD project saying these

things.
> The problem that would get solved would be best presented by the

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> following article http://research.sun.com/minds/2007-0710/

I didn't read anything that fixes any problem that exists today.  Sure

it's a neat research project, no debate there.  Whenever or if it

becomes interesting in the real world somebody in this project will

re-evaluate its merit.
> Not really, I'm not insulting you or any of the core developers.

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> What I meant is newer features.

> Why is it that our soft-updates based file system can't do background 'fsck'?

Because what the other projects did is wrong.  A background fsck renders

a system useless.  I don't think having a background fsck that prevents

my machine from booting is about as useful as not having it.  Do I want

it? of course I do but not bad enough to write the code myself.
> True, your investment as well as *ours*.
How are you investing?  Typing up an email does not constitute

"investment".  Sweating over a few lines of code for days on end is.
> Agreed, but wouldn't it be better if there was some kind-a list of

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> features most requested by users who can't/don't code in C?

> Then you core people could keep an eye on that list and think through

> your problems keeping that detail in mind.

We can make lists all day long but if they are not put to use it doesn't

change anything.  My softraid to-do list is out there and effectively I

have received no help (read code) from outside the project.  Lots of

enthusiast users and great test reports however no code and that is the

hard part.  Several other developers have lists and I am sure they'll

share this same sentiment if asked.
> Nothing of that sort, I don't _expect_ developers to do what I ask

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> for, in fact I've got very few needs above what the system is offering

> me right now, just that it hurts to see rest of the projects getting

> some nice features which we too would've got had the developers

> focused and *completed* what they started.

Again you don't get to vote on what another person spends their time on.

I have seen other projects get "nice" features and seen them replace

them later because it wasn't what it was cracked up to be.  One of the

best examples must be SCSI mid-layers in just about every other project.

They keep replacing them for a few new features and they bloated an area

that has to remain slim.  While the OpenBSD mid-layer certainly misses

some features they are not prohibitively and more importantly we were

right; the add-on features have not brought any concrete benefit to the

other projects.  Just NIH and vanity.
> I'm not belittling the developers, just that I really got irritated

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> when I lost 5 of the best developers (who were going to start work on

> a new TCP/IP stack) I'd gathered because Ted lost interest in his own

> work.

Every time you say "would be nice", "they should" or "why not?" you are

belittling someone's blood sweat and tears.  Ted gave you the starting

point, go ahead and finish it.  That is cooperative code development in

action.