Re: [9fans] long long whining

["Thomas Bushnell, BSG" <tb+usenet@becket.net>]

jim.robinson@stanford.edu (James A. Robinson) writes:

> On skimming the article, he says that on one hand any BSD developer is
> going to tell you that a transparent ftp client doesn't belong in the
> kernel. He writes "in a sense, this is correct," but then proceeds to
> argue that such "design methodology (which is based on preventing users
> from changing things they don't like) is being used to prevent system
> designers from making things better."  I don't follow what he's trying
> to say.

That BSD will probably never have a transparent ftp client.

> How is a user level transparent ftp client going to be worse than a
> system level transparent ftp client?  The per-process namespace that the
> Plan 9 folks developed made transparent ftp clients and other services
> very flexible.  I'm not clear what the argument for such services in a
> micro kernel would be.  But this is probably too off-topic, and rob is
> going to yell at us soon.

I have no objection to the Plan 9 way, certainly.  I never said a user
level transparent FTP client is worse than a system level one.  

Putting one in the *kernel* is architecturally bad.

For Plan 9, and the Hurd, this is still true, but we have a perfectly
good way (a better way!) than putting it in the kernel.

At the time that article was written, BSD had no such way.

Thomas