Message-Id: <199603131755.JAA00234@toccata.fugue.com>
To: Chris G Demetriou <Chris_G_Demetriou@ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Cc: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@dsg.stanford.edu>, perry@piermont.com,
        developers@NetBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: What is the limit on kernel size? 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 13 Mar 1996 12:28:02 EST."
             <12091.826738082@UX2.SP.CS.CMU.EDU> 
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 09:55:23 -0800
From: Ted Lemon <mellon@fugue.com>
Sender: owner-netbsd-developers@NetBSD.ORG
Precedence: first-class


> 	(1) i have not been convinced that it's the 'right thing'
> 	    to do,

Who died and appointed you God?  :')   I understand that you're
uncomfortable with it, but *why*?!?

> 	(2) i have no confidence that the implementation that perry
> 	    would be adopting is in any way good, and,
> 	(3) frankly, i have very little confidence that perry would
> 	    make 'the right decision' for me (as a developer of
> 	    another port), and so i'm _not_ going to take his "OK"

You don't have to.   Give him some rope, and see if he hangs himself.
You'll never know if Perry is a good developer if you don't let him
try to be one.   The risk *he* has to take is that if he doesn't pay
attention to other peoples' needs, his changes may get backed out, and
I think he's aware of that.

By all means, we should encourage Perry to tell us about design
decisions he's making, and we should certainly make constructive, or
even discouraging suggestions, but in the end we should also let him
do what he thinks is right and see what happens.

I've had experience with doing things The Right Way when it comes to
compressed booting, and I'll be happy to make that experience
available to Perry.  I also have experience with a variety of object
file formats (I was the toolchain guru at NCD), and I can probably
help him to steer clear of the reefs if he feels he needs my help in
doing that.

Meanwhile, can we stop flaming about this and get back to work?
There's a point at which continued criticism becomes *de*structive.

			       _MelloN_