>
> From: Peter Mutsaers <plm@xs4all.nl>
> Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 22:09:58 +0200 (MET DST)
>
> I don't know. Those conflicts were from before my FreeBSD time (I was
> using Linux 4 years ago and had been using it for years back then) but
> since at least 4 years I haven't seen any real conflicts at all.
>
> Some of these conflicts have been more recent than that, but you may not
> have been aware of them. Charles Hannum (Mycroft) hangs around MIT a
> lot, and I know a number of the NetBSD core team members, so I got to
> see some of the backwash of the NetBSD/OpenBSD conflict --- fortunately
> only second-hand! (And at the last Usenix, I was still hearing
> mutterings from the NetBSD folks, so it isn't just in the past.)
>
> It was enough for me to be convinced that a potential risk of a core
> team "architecture" is the *BSD factionalization. It doesn't have to
> happen, and there are certainly plenty of examples of projects that have
> not had this problem --- especially among application-level projects.
> It may be that application-level projects are smaller in scope, and
> that's why they work out. It may be that FreeBSD is working out because
> somehow (either by accident or by design) FreeBSD doesn't have some of
> the more..., ah, combative... personalities which OpenBSD and NetBSD are
> blessed with.
>
> In either case, the essential problem with a core team is specifying how
> you decide who is a member of the core team, and who is not (which is an
> extremely political act), and how do you resolve disputes within the
> core team. In the Linux model, one of the things which works is that we
> don't have the argument of who is on the core team, because there is no
> such thing (in all of the *BSD cases, the splits occurred when someone
> was thrown out of the core team). Also, we have a relative simply
> dispute resolution mechanism --- Linus decides. Richard and Larry and
> others may argue about scheduling changes, or Richard and I may argue
> about the appropriateness of devfs, but ultimately Linus gets to make
> the final decision.
>
> This all boils down to the old saying that the benevolent dictator is
> the best form of government --- there's only one problem: finding the
> benevolent dictator. Linus has, up till now, served as a very good
> benevolent dictator. It may be that the job has been putting much
> pressure on him, and we need to find ways of relieving this pressure, or
> otherwise solving the problem.
>
> But I am not convinced that the *BSD model is the only solution, or even
> the best solution. FreeBSD may have worked out well, and I'm happy that
> you've found a community where that's worked. But I also see the NetBSD
> and OpenBSD, and the conflicts which produced them, and that's also part
> of the *BSD model. Note that for better or for worse, the organization
> of the various *BSD's aren't all that different. The personalities
> involved seem to be what makes the most amount of difference.
>
> - Ted
>
>
> -
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