[rescue] best NetBSD support

[Big Endian]

>[ On Monday, June 17, 2002 at 14:43:18 (-0400), Kurt Mosiejczuk wrote: ]
>>  Subject: Re: [rescue] best NetBSD support
>>
>>  but I don't think it is unreasonable to think they should not call a
>>  system supported if it does not actually function as advertised.  Hell,
>>  at the very least because someone who might have the knowledge to complete
>>  a port wouldn't apply their time there because "it's already supported".
>
>You must be very careful not to make assumptions.  If you read the full
>details in the documentation and other related sources instead of simply
>assuming what "supported" means you'll learn to what extent a given
>machine might be functional.

This is bullshit.  To use an analogy I heard recently, men shouldn't 
be required to wear cups while walking down the sidewalk.  If we're 
playing soccer (football for all you not in .us), and I kick you in 
the balls (accidentally of course), its your problem that you are 
hurting, you should be wearing a cup.  If I am playing sports and I 
don't wear a cup, I'm dumb because I'm not preparing for a reasonable 
expectation of injury.  If I'm walking down the street and you kick 
me in the balls, that then becomes assault.  It would be unreasonable 
to expect men to wear cups when ever they go out of the house.  If I 
see something that says "This is supported" and there's no foot note 
that marks an exception or warning, it is unreasonable that I should 
have to look farther to find out "supported means it boots single 
user, 50% of the time and has a 75% chance of frying your hardware".

>If you understand the goals of The NetBSD Foundation (which are
>published on their web site) you'll also be less likely to make bad
>assumptions about what an operating system should do.

Well since the NetBSD Foundation is the end all be all of operating 
system experts, then they absolutely have the authority to say what 
an operating system should do.  I'm sorry but "I'm bored so I'll do 
something else instead of fixing my own bugs" is a microsoft way of 
making an OS.

quote from netbsd site:
<quotefromsite>
Supported hardware platforms

NetBSD's slogan is "Of course it runs NetBSD", and with good cause. 
At the time of writing NetBSD provides formal releases for twenty-one 
platforms, and has integrated ports for twenty-three others. Those 
numbers can be deceptive - within one platform (mac68k), there are 93 
different machines, of which 89 are currently supported (37 fully).
</quotefrom site>

and if you go here:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/mac68k/curr_info.html

you find out that "fully supported" means that not everything works 
right, but at least its usable for the most part.  IDE, network 
interfaces, and other stuff that is built on to the motherboard of 
the machines might not work even on a "fully supported" machine. 
This is lazy and deceptive marketing to advertise this as 
"supported".  If some critical part ( like a nic) is needed and not 
supported, then they should at least build a matrix of systems, a 
gradient of support and a list of what doesn't work on each system 
(ala macppc: http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html).

daniel
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