[Cced to hurd-devel.]
Hello! On Wed, Nov 08, 2006 at 08:46:36PM -0800, Roland McGrath wrote: > I haven't looked at the changes myself. If any files have been added to > include/, it sounds like there is some inadequate review going on before > commits. Folks, don't go hog-wild when you don't really know what you're > doing. Roland, while I in general agree to your given advice, I don't really think it here is appropriate towards Samuel and me. Do you dare to estimate what would have happened if I and the other handful of people would not have gone hog-wild over the last months? I wouldn't be surprised if GNU Mach and / or GNU Hurd and / or Debian GNU/Hurd and / or the GNU system would be dead and gray by now. Or would you (and Thomas Bushnell and Marcus and Neal and Mark Kettenis and Miles Bader and ...) suddenly have gotten active again? (Code-wise and --- perhaps even more important --- guidance-wise towards newcomers --- which I myself still consider to be on a large chunk, by the way!) Or would you want to have Szmidt (alone by himself then by now, I estimate) doing the work I'm doing with the handful? I absolutely do not want to praise myself here, but I nevertheless have the feeling that these last sentences of mine are not false and not much exaggerated. Where do you expect that the expertise you're demanding from Samuel and me (in this example) should come from? Of course I can read a lot. I can experiment with stuff. I can read old mailing list discussions (which I do, by the way). From time to time I dare to ask questions on the bug-hurd mailing list or --- seldom --- by private mail or I even call attention to urgent topics on the hurd-devel mailing list. But if then my appeals still aren't met with much response, what should I do then? Either I go somewhere else --- and yes, I certainly have enough places where I could spend my time --- or I stay here and strive to make the best out of it. I --- so far --- decided to stay. Now, Roland, this may sound a bit like an accusation towards you (both of us having in mind the number of unanswered question of mine about glibc stuff, for example), but I certainly don't want to offend you, but rather want you (and everyone else) to think about this above comment a bit. And if one did read it as a bit of an accusation then it is as well one towards Thomas and Marcus and Neal. Now, let me explain. Thomas might say (again) that he's always been here for us for discussing design questions and yes, he's even been here recently for rather trivial code-cleanup questions, but I can say the following: I'd like to discuss about design issues with you and everyone else, but in the one-and-a-half years of my work on the Hurd project I as yet didn't get that far. Basically all I was doing so far was working on keeping the whole thing running at all! (And that work still is nowhere near finished, by the way!) And apart from that, I was reading and reading and reading. Mostly alone by myself. I learned a lot, I can say. I learned from your previous works, from others's. On one side. On the other, I also learned how to deal with unpleasant people, I learned and I think I even managed to motivate others. So, Thomas, I still hope that one day we'll get to discuss about different stuff from code clean-ups, device driver updates, glibc (tls and others) internals and so on. But if I and the handful wouldn't care for that mostly-implementational work (compared to the Hurd's architecture itself) here and now, who would do that then? Marcus and Neal, you now might say that you've always had an open ear for my concerns. This is not untrue. But also here, your impetus to answer my questions was lower than my impetus was to ask questions was in the beginning. And yes, I of course realize that both of you're also working on getting your private lifes organized and that you're having a really busy time with thinking about the future directions of the Hurd, which I still consider --- and I'll keep confirming that --- a very important issue. Roland and Thomas, you're for sure also busy in your lifes, even without the Hurd I guess. But who's then left to mentor newcomers like me and others? And no, for a project of the Hurd's momentousness one can't only mentor oneself. And no, I'm not a porcelain doll that can't handle a somewhat harsh response. But _no response_ is different. And it happened so often. I've been meaning to send this email for some time now. It may even have been months. The ``Folks, don't go hog-wild when you don't really know what you're doing.'' bit was only the trigger to write it now. Regards, Thomas
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