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

A little misleading...

[greck]

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.

Call for opinions

[PD]

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.

From the Thread:

[big_groo]

This is my favorite response:

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...

Re:From the Thread:

[renehollan]

#define EUSERERR (EDOOFUS)

There. That'll stop EDOOFUS from appearing in sanitized corporate source code...

Until the day when...

/*#define EUSERERR (EDOOFUS) -- was redundant */

... and all hell breaks loose in the software industry as builds break all over the place. Tee hee hee.

EUSERERR?

[hackwrench]

Sure, shift the blame from the programmer (/* Programming error */) to the user(EUSERERR)

This seems typical

[Sentry21]

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

Re:This seems typical

[cperciva]

The assumption that anyone who makes a mistake is a 'doofus' doens't surprise me much at all.

I think people are misunderstanding the purpose of this error. EDOOFUS doesn't mean "someone has made a stupid mistake" -- it means "*I* have made a stupid mistake". People aren't editing each others' code to add EDOOFUS; they're using it in their own code.

Much better than simply writing /* this should never happen */ into your code.

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".

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:compromise

[JDWTopGuy]

EdoofusBSD is dead!

or

[geekoid]

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.

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.

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...

I was sold on EDONTPANIC...

[Anonymous Coward]

...as soon as I saw this post:

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer
Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, FreeBSD has already supplanted
the great UNIX[R] as the standard repository of all knowledge
and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains
much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it
scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important
respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the error
EDONTPANIC inscribed in large friendly letters in its source.

Apple: Deal with it

[version5]

I'm of the opinion that Apple should suck it up and accept the current state of affairs. There's no technical reason to change it. Anyone with the skills to go through Apple's source is likely to be well aware of the FreeBSD connection, and even if they do get offended, they wouldn't blame Apple.

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.

Thanks. Slashdot crowd needs coaching though...

[aphor]

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.