[ros-dev] What Happened

[Dann B. Smith]

Hi!

I'm probably a non-person to most people here.  This is my first foray
into the mailing list as a submitter.

If I may say a few things:

First:  No one has a RIGHT to anything.  Mailing lists, archives,
whatever.   You only have whatever options the originators of IP or code
decide to give.

Second:  For a fully open source project, private lists are Bad News.
While they do allow sensitive ideas to be discussed in a more informal
setting, they also give the options to have high-level decisions to be
made without any community support.  I've seen it saidf in this list
that the "private" list developers talk abut things that don't affect
other developers.  WRONG!  Anything that the "primary" developers talk
about affects the entire development community.  Otherwise, there's no
reason to duscuss it at all.

Third:  While reverse engineering may be legal in Europe, it's only
legal in certain circumstances in the US.  Open source projects tend to
be world-wide in scope.  Thus, the most restrictive of laws MUST be
applied so that no legal boundaries are crossed.  In this case, it looks
like the US has laws that do not exist elsewhere.  Likewise, the US has
one of the largest "markets" for software, so the US can't be discounted
unless we wish to develop a Europe-only OS.  Thus, no matter what, we
have to follow the restrictive US laws on reverse engineering.  Despite
any personal feelings, laws must be upheld.  

Fourth: Re: dirty laundry.  This is almost a non-starter.  Yes, some
things were said that caused a bit of an uproar.  Yes, the project is
being held up in some respects.  On the other hand, we have enough
people here who care enough to give voice to their opinions AND who care
enough to see the project succeed that the idea that "dirty laundry"
being aired in public being a bad thing is absurd.  The results say
otherwise.  Politics has NO place in an engineering project.  None.
Ever.  Don't let the idea of politics creep in and kill an otherwise
wonderful thing.

Fifth:  Personal attacks here are without doubt, worthless.  This is a
list for developers, coders, and engineers.  To call someone's attitude
ridiculous goes right back into my previous statement about politics.  

Sixth:  I would like to thank you all for reading my post, whether you
agree or not.  In the end, I speak for no one but myself, and you can
take what I say however you want.  

Dann Smith
Dallas, TX, US

-----Original Message-----
From: ros-dev-bounces at reactos.org [mailto:ros-dev-bounces at reactos.org]
On Behalf Of Rick Langschultz
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 6:27 PM
To: ReactOS Development List
Subject: Re: [ros-dev] What Happened

Don't get me wrong, reactos is a great programming idea. The way some
people do things is not necessarily what the community would want. As a
long term web developer I had an interest in VFS implementation of NTFS
over FAT or other filesystem. Creating a private mailing list not
available to the community restricts information from getting to
developers that want to continue to develop reactos, whether they commit
or not. Everyone has the right to develop what they think ReactOS needs.
Personally I think ReactOS needs stable Networking, a more stable and
secure filesystem, and service implementation. I also think that
building a universal install disk would be great -- install on PowerPC,
intel, arm, all on one cd would be great. I am not willing to give up on
programming projects so I will continue developing code, but when the
audit is complete I just hope 99% of the community is there to back
ReactOS up...


On Feb 8, 2006, at 4:05 PM, Ged Murphy wrote:

> Rick Langschultz wrote:
>> "The ReactOS(r) project is dedicated to making Free Software 
>> available to everyone by providing a ground-up implementation of a 
>> Microsoft Windows(r) XP compatible operating system." Why not say I 
>> am sorry ReactOS is off limits to you, the community, because people 
>> steal, cheat and lie. It is said that good programmers steal code, 
>> and great programmers know whose code to steal...
>> Stealing M$ code is obviously not the wisest choice...
>>
>> I will continue to develop my own personal ReactOS code but I don't 
>> think I will contribute it to ReactOS. My implementation of the NT 
>> VFS over FAT will be rolled into a new project. And be able to be 
>> downloaded by ROS developers and community members.
>>
>> Ridiculous...
>
> As is your attitude ...
>
> The ReactOS developers have spent thousands upon thousands of hours 
> writing a free operating system for the world to use.
> It has become so large now, that the inner workings are becoming 
> business like, and measures must be put into place to deal with this.
> If you can't accept that developers need a place where they can 
> discuss topics, have arguments and sort out issues, out of the public 
> eye then that's your problem. I'm positive Linux and BSD have 
> somewhere where developers can discuss issues, as do most other large 
> (and even small) projects  Maybe we should take minutes of any 
> telephone conversations we have and post those too?
>
> I for one am glad you won't be committing any code. You attitude 
> sounds like it would generate more problems than it's worth.
> _______________________________________________
> Ros-dev mailing list
> Ros-dev at reactos.org
> http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev

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