I suppose you and I will just have to disagree with the philosophy of this method of operation. Understand it is okay to disagree, disagreement fosters discussion, and providing the discussion stays civil, can only be a good thing.
I couldn't agree with you more on that. After all, changes in policies can only occur if there is somebody to disagree with them in the first place, brings it up, discuss it, compromise it. The world would be a boring place if everybody simply agreed with everybody. Keeping it civil is the key here yes.
However, if there is a chance that the Cross-LFS stuff can/will/should/might be/whatever the official "LFS product", then folks should be able to discuss things and recommend/suggest changes, starting now. The way you say things, it is up to Jim to do whatever he feels like, then later, the group can decide to implement what Jim did.
The group can also decide to change what Jim did, take some of his work, change it suit LFS' needs and integrate it into the book. There are different ways of going about it. Ultimiately it's Jim who decides our final course of action of course. It's his "baby" so to speak. Having said that, and having known Jim for quite some time now, he'll happily discuss things with the group before even making no-brainer changes. As long as there is a healthy atmosphere to do such a thing in.
We all do things sometimes we didn't think was necessary to be discussed, where in restrospect it may have been. We all have 20/20 hind sight.
I would like to think that if Cross-LFS has a chance at becoming the default build method, the group should be involved with the project from the beginning.At least that's how I see it.
Sometimes it works out that way. To take a different example, when Greg and Ryan were working on PLFS not every single scrap of discussion took place here. They started on it private and moved to involve the lfs-dev list when it was at least somewhat presentable in a mature form. Further discussion then took place here and finally it became part of the book.
I see cross-lfs following a similar path. It's in LFS' SVN now and it is being discussed already on this list. I agree that now is the time to make that a full-time thing. I (and I'm sure Jim too) just take issue with the flaming and accusations the other day. A polite question "did you happen to..." goes much farther than a straight out "you did this and this and..." when the validity of that claim is uncertain.
Let me make a final statement. I said as much in my previous email but just on the off chance I was not clear enough: we all want development and discussions to start happening on this list. Some people are very protective of LFS it seems like and they are almost offended when it doesn't happen here. That's all good, it shows a strong community spirit but some people take it too far. If we want this list to return to what it used to be, we first need to brush up on our inter-personal skills. The rest will automatically follow.
-- Gerard Beekmans /* If Linux doesn't have the solution, you have the wrong problem */ -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
