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Hubbard Asks FreeBSD Hackers To Rename EDOOFUS
MobyTurbo writes "Jordan K. Hubbard, on instruction from Apple, had to inform the freebsd-hackers list that the error, pointed to by the error message number named EDOOFUS, must be changed. Several interesting suggestions have been made in the resulting thread."
EDFS seems like it's obscure enough to not offend, but true enough to the original sentiment to fly for those "in the know".
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
From the article, it doesn't seem like Apple actually asked Hubbard to do anything, nor does it seem like he's saying it "must be changed"... he's just proactively trying to solve a problem before it forks into a silly headache. No need to inflate the drama of the situation any more than it's already going to be.
Take a look at the freakin' URL, it's from a server run by Google!
I somehow think that their daily traffic vastly outpaces Slashdot's on just about any given day.
Somebody mod this karma whoring post down please?
Obviously the kernel developers need OUR help to sort this sorry mess out. Everyone, please make a google news account ASAP and put your two cents in. If all of us together put our minds to it, and posted our opinions on that thread, I'm sure they would appreciate our help in solving this problem quickly and efficiently. Thanks.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
From: Michael Meltzer (mjm@michaelmeltzer.com) Subject: Re: A modest proposal for better errno values...
View this article only Newsgroups: fa.freebsd.hackers Date: 2003-05-13 16:58:07 PST
> #define EDOOFUS 88 /* Programming error */
#define E370HSSV 88 /* Programming error */
I think this one keeps the orinigal sprite of EDOOFUS, I will now crawl back into my cave :-)
MJM
PS. For the non dyslexics try reading it upsidedown.
Priceless...
Uh, yeah. Google is highly likely to get slashdotted...
"lack of quality control is one of the pillars of slashdot"
Sure, shift the blame from the programmer (/* Programming error */) to the user(EUSERERR)
lovely name that is.
I don't mean to troll - some of my best friends are FreeBSD users - but somehow, this sort of thing doesn't surprise me. In every circumstance I've ever tried (and believe me, I've tried), I've found FreeBSD coders to be somewhat... elitest. The assumption that anyone who makes a mistake is a 'doofus' doens't surprise me much at all. Oddly enough, though, this is exactly the sort of childishness that many lead FreeBSD team members accuse Linux of.
Why not just change it? Why make it into an issue? Is this some kind of 'fight the man' issue? You'd think they'd have gotten an ego boost from Apple using their code - repeatedly - and by trying to work *with* the community instead of just taking and leaving.
I tried FreeBSD because I thought it would be neat, and it was, until I had to ask someone for help. Then I went back to Linux. Unfortunately, they don't seem to realize that people are people too. Help is more useful than insults.
--Dan
For those who are left in the dark, the bike shed reference is the following:
16.19. Why should I care what color the bikeshed is?
The really, really short answer is that you should not. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change.
More details at the link.
All weakness is within you, As is all courage.
I think that many of the developrs on FreeBSD will look at this and laugh and it will get changed. Does anyone check errno anymore anyway (lol)
Only 'flamers' flame!
it could be EURNOTEXPECTED2UNDERSTANDTHIS ;)
Posting random crap to random thread in article to undo stupid moderation mistake...
that gives me an Idea!
national.. no, GLOBAL slashdot Google day.
Once a year, at noon GMT aeverybody does a search on google. I bet we might have such n effect, that it might take as long as 3 seconds to return reslts!
or..aa...not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
EBUTHEADCOMPUTERCOMPANY
No, it is not a troll. it reference tha outcome of something that happened between Apple and a certian astronomer.
of course, if you are actually qualified to judge statemment about Apple, I wouldn't need this disclaimer. butthead.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It must be when a rather innocuous request to freebsd-hackers makes it to slashdot! Just to set the record straight, I didn't do this "at Apple's request", I did this because it seemed silly to fork a header file over the name of a single entry in it and, as I said in my message to -hackers, I just thought I'd check to see if FreeBSD was willing to change it before Apple changed it in their own sources. Anyone with time to waste can see the original message (and the thread which followed) here:- hackers /2003-May/000791.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd
Personally, I rather liked the EDONTPANIC suggestion...
- Jordan Hubbard co-founder, the FreeBSD Project. Director, UNIX Technology. Apple Computer
ESOSUMI
EDOH!
Now that has more meaning.
EUCANTCODE
/~mikeg
Sure, and after that let's see if the slashdot effect can also
bring down the Yahoo index and the Microsoft homepage.
Anyway, back to topic...
if errno 42 were still available I'd definately vote for EDONTPANIC,
but as it stands I'm thinking maybe an acronym that shouldn't offend
people who don't happen to know what it means. You know, EWTF or
somesuch. If it were actually a user error (as the person who
suggested EUSERERR must have thought) I'd say EPEBCAK, but the
EDOOFUS error was actually being used for errors in the programmer's
own code, so something more like ECANTHAPPEN makes much better sense
than EUSERERR. But ECANTHAPPEN isn't really all that funny. (Then
again, EDOOFUS is pretty marginal in that regard too.) There's
always EONETWOFIVETHREESIRTHREE, I guess.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
hmm, Can anyone else picture the strings leading from Jordan's fingers to Steve Job's fingers. I mean cmon, does it really matter? Its like asking a friend to build you a bikeshed then bitching because they didn't do a good enough job.
:)
I think that it adds more character to freebsd than a stale, sterilized and bland OS.
Then he has the balls to say that he likes a specific name.
"If it's just used for kernel errors, I was pretty happy with the
EDONTPANIC suggestion someone made earlier.
- Jordan"
Saving some face there Jordan? Good try bud.
Ohh yeah, One more thing. Fix it yourself lazy ass.
RiGgA
phk (the certain Dane) had some clashes over GEOM causing breakage elsewhere in the OS lately, with grog and others (see -current or -cvs mailing lists archives).
Can't help but thinking that there's some proxy warfare going on here. Can someone tell me if the NetBSD folks are less childish? I don't buy this being an Apple complaint. The user DOES NOT SEE the "DOOFUS" word, he'll see the error description (= "programming error")
Beware if someone calls you an apple after that though.
P.S. I use OpenBSD
I prefer FreeBSD to ObscurifiedBSD. Source code filled with stupid comments and unfunny, self-indulgent attempts at humor is Linux-quality source code.
Apple can profit from the labors of the FreeBSD folks, that's cool, I'm in favor of that, but I draw the line when Apple decides it wants to interfere with the FreeBSD culture.
I also find it slighly hypocritical that Apple wants to change a little-known and hardly-used identifier after publically code-naming one of their projects "Butthead Astronomer" in honor of Carl Sagan. Also, as someone on the newsgroup mentioned: The Boolean variable "STUPID" [in Apple Pascal I] --documented as STUdent Programmer ID-- was set TRUE by default, as shipped by Apple Computer.
"It's Dot Com!"
JKH posted this to the developers' list. I don't think he was intending to throw weight around, but more likely ask the guys who actively develop to make a simple change.
Only when it becomes Slashdot discussion does it suddenly seem like he's using politics to change FreeBSD from behind the Apple tree.
Please?
Is this in the 5? I did not see anything in 4.8. If so, that will shed some light on the next version of OS X... er Darwin.
Yeah, slow news day indeed.
Anyway having wasted my time reading through the thread I might as well waste a few more seconds venting my opinion.
First off, whoever the idiot at Apple who is pushing you to fork to avoid the horrible indignity of having the word doofus in the source code is, he should be fired. Yesterday. God, that's just lame. Particularly considering it's in a place that amounts to a note amongst the programmers saying 'if you get this you did something really dumb' - it's not going to users and it's perfectly appropriate in context. I read all your soft-pedaling about not being humour impaired yourself, and I think you needed to do that, this request is just so bloody silly it's unbelievable.
That said, I do think the EDONTPANIC suggestion is a very good one. There is nothing wrong with EDOOFUS, but EDONTPANIC is better, so maybe something good came of this.
Of course my opinion means nothing, my only connection to FreeBSD is the fact I'm typing this on my TiBook, and I'm going back to work now. I don't envy you, though, if your job requires you to cater to people that are willing to fork because EDOOFUS offends them then you are really earning your money in my opinion. Glad someone is, if Apple ever dies I'll cry, I really love my TiBook and I would hate to ever have to go back to an x86 based laptop. ;)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Jordan has a point (as he usually does when he speaks up). An errno like that isn't something that's going to be burried in some kernel code for no one to see - that's something that programmers will have to use. I do not use silly variables and function names in my software for several reasons, #1 they aren't descriptive generally and #2 it's just not professional.
..... but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong..
I also agree with Jordan that this individual errno name is trivial but I believe his concern is that it's the start of a trend that could make programming for BSD an exercise in trash talking and English slang.
The idea isn't that FreeBSD committers can't call their errno EDOOFUS, but rather Apple can't as a matter of style. Therefore, EDOOFUS threatens to make the separation between FreeBSD and Darwin/MacOS-X one iota worse than it already is. Forking is an unfortunate necessary evil, and despite the "openness" of the code, there is another dimension of usability, which means portability in this case.
If you make your code open, but people have to add a lot of macros to adapt your code, it isn't as good as if they could just use it as-is. A good programmer is always looking for any affordable way to make his programming effort more useful with less work to make use of it. It's the wisdom of forward-thinking laziness. If your code is hard to adapt, who cares if it is free? The cost of re-use includes blood-and-sweat of integration. Ideally there would be no blood-and-sweat to reuse FreeBSD code. A bad joke (admit it: hacker humor is mostly bad inside jokes) is not a good reason to fork a file IMHO; I agree with JKH.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
It is damned funny. But I do think it at least supports his contention that he does, in fact, have a sense of humor.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Bury this bitch before it stinks up the joint.
Can you explain to us that are not native english speakers that what EDOOFUS means. I know it's error code about stupid kernel programming.
You know, I agree with almost everything in your post. The one thing on which I don't think with you: it's not going to users and it's perfectly appropriate in context. I have to preface with the thought that people without a sense of humor are probably not cut out for programming in a community effort, but I believe it is (slightly) wrong to insult people (even tounge-in-cheek) just for coding a bug.
First, free software is partly about removing the barriers for users who want to become programmers and ultimately contributors. It is counterproductive to start with an assumption of us-and-them user-and-programmer duality. Second, I believe that the people who deserve the DOOFUS title are the ones that don't think they need to trap error values, because it seems to work 99% of the time for them.
You never can be sure how fragile another person's ego is, or how dependent they are on their fragile ego for day-to-day living. None of that has anything to do with the value of the contribution they can make to the FreeBSD codebase if they are motivated to solve a personal problem that affects other FreeBSD users (or hackers) too. So, in the spirit of "Be lenient in what you require; be strict in what you provide" I think it is a worthwhile long-term concern. The best way to think about it is that every talented programmer is potentially an ego problem, and every effort to facilitate cooperation and harmony will pay off down the road.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
EU screwed up? SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES!! Smart little propagandist we are, huh? :D
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
[Ed. Note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
is that coders can take a joke.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
This was an explicit instruction given to programmers at a company I used to work for which will, for the time being, remain anonymous. :)
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Not as good as the Amiga error message off "Guru Meditation" and the text flashed diffrent colours fantastic your computer was going to find enightentment you can belive the stories of it being designed by hippies in a tent and it would explain why there where always spliff butts behind it or maybe that was just my older sister.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Simple guided process:
^.^
The DEC developers, especially the RSX family, had a puckish sense of humor and included all sorts of easter eggs in their products. Error codes were numeric, and had symbols of the form IE.XXX, where XXX was supposed to be as mnemonic as possible. Error number 69 was for "no network path"...the symbol got assigned "IE.NFW"...for "No FXXXXing Way"...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
How can they complain...isn't one of their sound files named sosueme? If that isn't a problem, this definitely isn't. Perhaps if it was aimed towards the user it would be.
Change to EHUBBARD. It could potentially have the same meaning. It would not be offensive to the programmers I am sure.
It smells like something's dead.
That means you are full of antidisestablishmentarianism, dude! (Yay, I finally found an occasion to use that word!)
Wrong. Antidisestablishmentarianism is opposal to the separation of church and state, which doesn't have a damn thing to do with this. Nice try, though.
.
By the way, while the antidisestablishmentarianist movement has been dead for some time, someone recently brought it back with a movement called neoantidisestablishmentarianism. If, like me, you don't think neoantidisestablishmentarianism is a good philosophy at all, you can join my contraneoantidisestablishmentarianism movement and behave contraneoantidisestablishmentarianistically all the time.
But if you just want people to think you are a contraneoantidisestablishmentarianist, and you aren't really, then what you are doing is acting pseudocontraneoantidisestablishmentarianistically
Posts like the parent are why I often read /. at a threshold of -1. That was hilarious given the context, and seeing as how the "*BSD is dying" troll gets posted here on at least a daily basis, I'd say it's more of an inside joke than a troll. Everyone knows, of course, that BSD isn't dying at all.