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."

Comments

Bike Shed reference

[Karna]

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.

Re:Bike Shed reference

[essdodson]

Thanks for the tidbit. This the second time I've ran into something interesting like this. "Bell The Cat" is another interesting bit I ran across almost a year ago.

Anyway, I think the bike shed deal applies to the vast majority of posts here on slashdot. I wonder if there's another cool term to reference situations where people are clueless and should not comment, that would encompass most of the posts not handled by the bike shed.

Re:This seems typical

[ctr2sprt]

I got into a fairly huge debate on some Linux newsgroups on this subject. I suppose I should provide my background: I started with Linux back in the 1.0s, then eventually converted to FreeBSD at 4.4, which is where I am now. Many of the posters had interesting stories and comments on Linux source code, and some people (like me) had a problem with the... I don't know what to call it, kind of a snobbish anti-elitism (the elitism of people who hate elitists). My first post on the subject is where you start, in case you care which one is me.

Basically the same discussion, and basically the same problems. Neither Linux nor FreeBSD are immune to this. I'm disappointed to see EDOOFUS in FreeBSD, but unfortunately, it's an artifact of the hacker culture. For some reason, we equate expressing ourselves with acting like children, and so the attitude works its way into our code.

Anyway, I doubt anyone will find that huge thread interesting - watching someone beat his head against a wall is probably less fun than doing it yourself - but it certainly should show that Linux has lots of those people you seem to dislike.

Re:This seems typical

[lpontiac]

I've found FreeBSD coders to be somewhat... elitest.

Thing is, this isn't something that a coder slings at a user, this is something that a FreeBSD coder would see as a result of their own mistake.

I'm a coder, and when I make a stupid mistake I'll call myself all manner of things when I figure it out. Then someone in the office will ask and I'll explain what I did, and they'll follow up with a Nelson laugh.

It's all in good fun. The only reason for removing this error (aside from, as stated in the Usenet thread, some columnist wanker getting ahold of it and blowing it out of proportion) would be to never have a "stupid error" code thrown in your face when you do something.. really stupid. I'm not quite sensitive enough to think that's necessary.

Re:This seems typical

[cperciva]

EINVAL means "invalid argument". EAGAIN means "resource temporarily unavailable". Neither means "woah, something wierd happened here -- we've recovered, but this Needs To Be Fixed".

Umm.... Slow news day?

[jkh]

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:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers /2003-May/000791.html

Personally, I rather liked the EDONTPANIC suggestion...

Re:or

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I laughed when I saw this, great reference.

For those wondering, when the first group of PowerPC Macs came out, one of them (I think it was the 7100) was code named the Carl Sagan. Sagan protested this use of his name. Apple was pissed, it's just a code name. Someone renamed it to BHA, for Butt-Headed Astronomer.