> > I think the "stealth" would not have been necessary if the previous
> > debates had not always ended up as religious wars.  Convincing the
> > other guy that you will never yield, no matter what, is not exactly
> > the best way to get your own way, when everyone else is a volunteer
> > just like yourself.

Note that my wording above suggests I know more than I'm telling. Actually
I don't. The situation just really smells to me as if those involved felt
it was necessary. I knew Luke was working on something from reading it on
these lists, but I didn't know it would be committed until that happened.
 
> Indeed, it appears that the correct way to get your way is to just go
> ahead and commit it, disagreements be damned.
> 
> Ramming your idea of the right way down everyone's throat is not
> exactly an ideal way to make converts either.

Hold it. Whose throat is being rammed here? Certainly not "everyone's".
If the recent postings are representative, yours and a couple others.

While you can claim the moral high ground in this affair, that is mainly
because of the unwritten (and therefore unenforceable) rules of consensus
that TNF tries rather hard to operate under. Blaming TNF for not enforcing
an unenforceable policy seems somewhat futile to me. After all, there is
no evidence to support the notion that this was done lightly.

> As I remarked recently in private mail, I'm not even sure that rc.d
> itself is necessarily that bad; I don't expect it to be pleasant, but I
> might have been willing to try it and see.  But when NetBSD evidences
> this much willingness to ditch what I used to think it stood for and
> lunge precipitously in the direction of supporting the masses at the
> expense of the niche they used to satisfy so well, I have no reason to
> think it will stop here.  Indeed, I fully expect it to continue until
> it's just another point-and-drool free unix variant, distinguished from
> FreeBSD largely by the hardware it supports, and Linux by that and the
> GPL.

"this much willingness" ?? After how many false starts, floundered debates,
and other political stalemating? How hard did they try to reach a consensus
before finally doing this? I think they deserve a heckuva lot more credit
than you're giving them here.

I understand you're disillusioned, but your arguments are really reaching
now. Taking things to the logical extreme as if it is going to wake up the
fencesitters; come on.

I think you'd be better off focusing on getting a formal statement like:
"Yes, we realize that there are dissenting opinions, however we have decided
that it is in the best interests of the Project to forge ahread and make the
best of this." Actually I would like to see this too. The distinct lack of
one bothers me, as if giving any sort of ground whatsoever would open the
doors to reversing the decision.

Cripes. The whole thing just keeps getting more and more childish. WTF.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com