On Sat, 31 May 1997 15:23:40 -0700 
 Ted Lemon <mellon@hoffman.vix.com> wrote:

 > That's a shame.   Are you sure we can't just work through the
 > problems?   This is definitely the direction the build should be
 > going. 

Working on the problems is a fine idea... however, several problems
happened here:

	(a) The original semantics, and how they were used, were not
	    well-understood or well-documented.

	(b) The new semantics were not really well-documented, and
	    not well-announced, either.  There were a lot of
	    surprises when suddently things that had worked for
	    three years suddently no longer worked, without warning.

	(c) It's actually caused lots of problems for people who
	    are trying to get work (that must necessarily be done
	    in -current) done.

This is why it's now on a branch... people can now work through the
problems as they choose, not being forced to when they're working
on some other (potentially non-trivial) task.

Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939