From: atkinson@itd.nrl.navy.mil (Randall Atkinson)
Subject: Re: RFD: comp.os.386bsd.{announce,bugs,devel,misc}
Organization: Naval Research Laboratory, DC
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 01:37:53 GMT

In article <CGD.92Nov23155206@eden.CS.Berkeley.EDU> cgd@eden.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Chris G. Demetriou) writes:

>In article <By6z2E.Jp7@ra.nrl.navy.mil> atkinson@itd.nrl.navy.mil (Randall Atkinson) writes:
>>  This proposal is out of order as a violation of the "6 month rule"
>>on waiting between proposing essentially the same newsgroup as one
>>that was shot down.
>
>wrong.
>it never got to a vote last time; it was dropped on the floor w/o a vote.
>take a look in the guidelines...

  The whole POINT of the 6 month rule was to prevent the same bogon
newsgroup proposals from being recursively raised.  I recall the
guidelines quite well as I date from the days before the Great
Renaming and have had a hand in the Guidelines from time to time. 

  This silly proposal you are raising again has been discussed and
shot down at least 3 times that I recall and is clearly a violation of
the 6 month rule.

>>1) wrong name.  Should be	comp.unix.bsd.i386.*
>
>	not true;  386bsd is becoming less and less "bsd" as days go by.
>	not only that, there are other bsd variants for the i386 which are
>	*not* 386bsd and for which 386bsd discussion does *not* apply.

Bullshit.  The other variants are almost entirely identical in source form
and vary in something less than a dozen files in the entire OS.  386BSD
is almost entirely derived from the 4.3 BSD distribution from CSRG and hence
is most certainly a fairly generic BSD port.  As to claims that it is
less "bsd" this is certainly not supportable in terms of existing postings
or source releases or even the name that the OS is called.  If it weren't
BSD it wouldn't have been named "386bsd".

  All of the discussion regarding 386BSD is also applicable to BSD/386
(from BSDI) in its entirety with no exceptions.  Don't ignore the
reality that BSDI distributes FULL SOURCE with each license and so
every single one of those folks can (and most do) use pieces and parts
from 386BSD.

  Heck, the BSD on SPARC work is largely the same as the 386BSD stuff
modulo assembler stuff underneath and small variances for chip
architecture in a very small handful of files.

>	finally, 386bsd is *NOT* unix

  Nonsense.  This is reality.  BSD is a popular kind of UNIX and
everyone here understands that.  It most certainly is UNIX.  If it is
placed anywhere but under the comp.unix.bsd* tree the name won't be
appropriate because newcomers won't find it where it is expected to
live -- along with the other UNIX versions.  

  The legal argument against comp.unix.bsd* is specious because of the
large number of UNIX variants (e.g. ultrix) that don't license the
trademark and have lived under comp.unix for many YEARS with no
quibbles from anyone.

>>2) ~.devel is gratuitously unconventional.  ~.programmer would be better
>
>	on 386bsd, almost everybody *has* to be a programmer.
>	what we're pushing for is a forum to discuss kernel development,
>	not general 386bsd programming.

  Then name it ~.kernel so that the name at least makes sense to first
time net.folks -- the whole point of naming is to make it easier for
newcomers to find the newsgroups relevant to their interests.  Your
proposal violates that and common sense.

>>3) The bugs newsgroup already exists:  comp.bugs.4bsd
>>   and the proposed group has the wrong heirarchy and so if anything
>>   were created it should be named comp.bugs.4bsd.i386
>
>	again, the 4bsd hierarchy/classification is becoming increasingly
>	incorrect.  If it is not completely incorrect now, it *will* be,
>	a year from now.

  The above is not any kind of answer, so you must be conceding that
the original ~.bugs group proposal was malformed.  I'll take this as
being a closed item.  Moreover, the bugs in 386bsd are mostly going to
be shared in other BSD ports as current postings have clearly
demonstrated.  Much of the discussion above also applies here.

  A point not mentioned earlier is that most sites cannot implement
ANY newsgroup name beginning with the characters [0-9] because of the
way the popular news transport software is designed.  Newsgroup names
MUST begin with a letter if they are to be implementable at most
sites.  This is why we have ~.i386 rather than ~.386 in several
places.

  If this nonsense keeps up, I'll add other points from time to time
as the spirit moves me.

  One would think that after 2 tries, they could at least get the 3rd
try to address some of the obvious issues (e.g. bogon namespace) that
got this proposal shot down so clearly on the first two times it was
proposed but these proposers seem denser than granite.

Ran
atkinson@itd.nrl.navy.mil
Newsgroups: news.groups