At Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:45:40 +0100 (BST), Iain Hibbert
<plunky%rya-online.net@localhost> wrote:
Subject: Re: FreeBSD devfs support on NetBSD 5.0
>
> I've heard it said that waiting for perfection means that you will wait
> forever.
Indeed.
> Having said that, I agree with Reinoud in that I would prefer a
> good implementation over just something that works.
well, agreed too, assuming you meant "just something that just barely
works but is incomplete and rough around the edges and could never be
used in production". :-)
But I would still prefer anything over nothing.
> It is common enough
> that when something works nobody will bother to make anything better and I
> like to think that here at NetBSD we strive for good.
I don't believe that at all. I think that's about one of the biggest
fallacies I can imagine in the world of software development, especially
open source development. (It may be somewhat true sometimes in the
commercial world where everyone is too busy to bother going back to work
on something that is boring, difficult, or working well enough to leave
alone; or in the lone hacker world where again the hacker is too busy
with bigger and better things.)
I think if it were really true we'd all still be happily running much
clunkier software and NetBSD probably wouldn't exist at all. :-)
Here we love to fix what ain't broke!
In contrast I believe that something that just works, and is on the
right track, is incredible incentive for someone else to come along and
work at improving and extending it. Even if the first step is not on
the right track it can often provide incentive for someone with a
different vision to actually step up and get their hands on a keyboard.
The bigger problem is that a developer who does the first cut at
something has to be the kind of person who will make it abundantly clear
that they don't mind having other people mucking about with "their"
code; and of course others have to be unafraid of really stepping all
over someone else's first cut.
--
Greg A. Woods
Planix, Inc.
<woods%planix.com@localhost> +1 416 218-0099 http://www.planix.com/
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