> I'm yet to see anyone demonstrate a disadvantage of doing so.
the problems with publishing code is you have to:
write the manual
document the install process
remove all the debug cruft that you where leaving just in case
field emails about how it:
doesn't "Work they way I expected"
it suicides if I press Alt-J
"the whole design is fucking braindamaged"
This takes time and effort, and noone wants to just put the code
up in a mess, reputations do matter, and we take prinde in our work, don't we?
whats worse is if you publish a tar and then somone fixes a load of
stuff but in the meantime you are working and your code gets out of sync
so you have to merge by hand.
use CVS (or whatever is trendy) I hear you say? Well you have to set that
up, and if you have CVS you have to police it, what if people check in
broken code.
It all takes time and concerntration, which would be better spent on
getting on with the code and sorting it out.
One of the biggest things we lack is Wifi support (IMHO) and Russ put
up his incomplete Centrino driver a few years ago. How much interest has that
sparked? Similarly the sshv2 code, though we now have openssh so its less of
a problem.
Ok, the bottom line for me:
I AGREE it would be lovely to have an AMD64 kernel for pure kudos reasons
(my OS has 64 bits and yours doesn't), BUT, I completely understand why those
working on it don't want to release it until they are ready.
-Steve
