This is what happens when a bunch of 20+ years old guys suddenly get
rich. It's the Marc Andressan Syndrome at NetScape all over again, it's
like they're all 18 years old, and they just got their first piece of
ass or something -- it drives them crazy, then they go nuts -- then
comes the arrogance, conceit, and "I'll get you" behavior. Look how
Alan reacted ("I'll get you Merkey").
This isn't the Alan Cox I used to know -- the one that went out of his
way to put Linux first and was the good samaritan of Linux Kernel. I
think all the money is making folks a little nuts, and we are seeing the
natural fallout of this -- hell, these guys are all under 30 (most of
them). I think Linux is close to the point that it will fragment and
break into many smaller efforts. I can feel it starting.
".... Success can test a man's metal more surely than the strongest
adverary ..."
Jeff
David Weinehall wrote:
>
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2000, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
> >
> > Alan,
> >
> > Contract? What the hell is this? I have been observing what goes on
> > here now for almost 18 months, and from my vantage point, it's clear
> > that RedHat just sits at the mouth of each womb ready to devour every
> > baby that is born like a pack of hungry, ravaging wolves. Everyone
> > tries their best ot put on a happy face while they knife each other in
> > the back and plot and scheme ways to rip each other off, and shaft each
> > other in the Linux Community.
>
> ... Red Hat is no other that any other company, apart from that they
> have a larger interest in it's field of business. They want to employ
> the very best. This is quite natural; if they didn't, they would betray
> their stockholder's trust.
>
> No backstabbing is going on as far as I can tell. This far, the only
> non-respectable company I've noticed in the Linux-business would be
> Linux-One, which seems (to say the least) very rotten. But they are no
> real part of the Linux-community anyway.
>
> > This is why Linux will ***ALWAYS*** be inferior to Windows NT/2000. It
> > can only be as good as the people who write it, and when they're second
> > rate unix hackers, that's the ceiling on the quality level of the
> > effort. Anyone who suggest any direction that's not understandble by
> > you "gods" gets ignored, knifed, bad mouthed, or character assisinated,
> > and if what's proposed is not undergrad unix computer science, you guys
> > don't seem to understand it, or care (and you show a definite
> > unwillingness to even try).
>
> If you call people like Alan Cox, Alexander Viro, Peter Anvin, Linus
> Torvalds, etc. second-rate Unix-hackers, you've proved that you are
> definitely not in a position to have a company of your own. It's amasing
> that your customers trust you.
>
> I hope you don't mean what the letter of your mail says.
>
> I don't know what suggestions you've come with that people haven't
> accepted; as far as I can tell (and I try to read everything posted on
> the lkml), people have been welcoming your move to port NWFS to Linux.
>
> Linux is not Win 2K. I am thankful for that. I think most Linux-users
> are. It might be easier for you to port NWFS if the VFS was rewritten to
> be more similar to the one of Win 2K, but that would also mean that
> we'd miss many other things we want.
>
> > One good example is the VFS in Linux. EVERY release, you guys break
> > something or there is MASSIVE file system corruption, or memory
> > corruption, or some other catastrophe that takes days to sort out.
>
> The VFS is NEVER rewritten during stable kernel-releases. If you use
> unstable releases, you should be aware of the risk for corruption/
> memory-corruption and other bad things.
>
> Sure thing, it is not easy for a completely new file-system to go into
> an unstable kernel, because it's a changing target, and this is why
> new file-systems usually should be introduced in the beginning or
> end of a cycle, where changes are to important subsystems.
>
> > Commercial OS vendors never tolerate this lack of
> > quality/compatibility. I'm sorry if you are offended, and i withdraw
> > the allegations (man did I get your dander up -- jeeeeez), but we are
> > spending money on developing on Linux, and the obvious lack of COURTESY,
> > PROFESSIONALISM, and QUALITY increases support effort (I have to rewrite
> > the VFS interface EVERYTIME you post a new kernel. You guys are
> > constantly BREAKING stuff and LEAVING IT BROKEN and inflicting your
> > laziness and bugs on the entire planet. If a Microsoft engineer (or
> > Novell engineer) operated at this level of quality, they would have
> > their work heavily scrutinized.
>
> Commercial OS-vendors instead tolerate high levels of
> performance-degrading misdesigns, instead of removing them, just for the
> sake of keeping their VFS intact. Even more vital flaws are sometimes
> left in because of this.
>
> Courtesy? Is your e-mail a sign of courtesy? In the Linux-world we are
> all measured by the quality of our code, not by our titles or the place
> we work at.
>
> Professionalism? Do you REALLY consider it professional to leave vital
> flaws in an operating system just to please developers, developers that
> have access to the source-code of the operating system and the possibility
> to affect the development of it themselves?
>
> Quality? And you mention Microsoft in the same e-mail? Allow me to
> laugh... Muahahaha. I don't consider an operating-system where
> beta-versions that are SOLD to the public eats your filesystem to be
> of much Quality.
>
> Breaking Stuff? Yes, that happens quite often. But virtually never during
> a stable kernel-series. Breaking things during development is a necessity
> to get an overall better product in the end. For instance, the breaking
> of the VFS in v2.3 was necessary to get good SMP-performance.
>
> Leaving it broken? This only happens with subsystems/drivers that have
> no maintainer and with code that we know will change soon again anyway.
>
> NTFS is broken (for all I know) in v2.3. And nobody has enough knowledge
> to fix it properly. Your company has, yet you haven't made any effort in
> that direction. Now why haven't you?! Because you haven't got time? Well,
> maybe those you accuse of being lazy don't have time either? Ever thought
> of that?
>
> Inflicting bugs upon the entire planet?!! And you dare to say that
> Microsoft doesn't? The only difference here, is that when Microsoft does
> so, it takes 200 bug-reports and 12 months for a bug-fix to arrive, while
> there usually are inofficial patches available withing a few days in the
> Linux-case, and a completely new kernel within a month.
>
> Now go figure what is better.
>
> I'm still thinking that the port of NWFS to Linux is a good thing.
> I do not think your totally unbalanced posts on this list is, however.
>
> /David Weinehall
> _ _
> // David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /> Northern lights wander \\
> // Project MCA Linux hacker // Dance across the winter sky //
> \> http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/ </ Full colour fire </
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