From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: bogus@does.not.exist.com ()
Date: Mon,  4 May 2009 19:42:15 +0000
Subject: No subject
Message-ID: <mailman.29.1274030406.1510.9fans@9fans.net>
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 012be362-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

system unless I know I can downgrade it if necessary.  I have to be able to
do this quickly.  And no, I do not expect for the upstream maintainers to
do this for me and I have 206 ebuilds in my private overlay (I just counted
them).  

> As nemo points out, "relax".
> 
> EBo just did a very good thing for all of us: 9vx is part of a distro.
> I think he's got some credibility at this point :-)

Thank you Ron for a call for civility.  

Reflecting over all this I think that I do not yet know how to communicate
in the 9fans' language, and that much of the misunderstandings stem from
simple miscommunication.  I'll learn with time, and I hope I will not be to
annoying in the process.  But the couple of times I have seen this kind of
vehemence in the past with other code bases it stemmed from software
systems which had no package management and difficult build/configure
systems.  The end result was that new users would either get discouraged
and drift off, or they would spend literally hundreds of hours to just get
to the point where they can dependably configure, build, and run the code. 
An interesting consequence of this is that any proposed non-trivial change
is met by the old-timers with a resounding "DON'T TOUCH IT!!!"  And there
is good reasons for this -- namely that it took some of these people a year
or more (quite literally) of training and experience to understand how to
maintain the systems.  A significant change will cause them to have to go
back and learn the new system, and they remember what happened the last two
or three times that happened.  I have to wonder if the same this applies to
the Plan 9 community.  If so, the best way to move forward will be to fork
the code.

  EBo --