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Index: share/man/man7/Makefile
===================================================================
--- share/man/man7/Makefile
+++ share/man/man7/Makefile
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
#MISSING: eqnchar.7 ms.7 term.7
MAN= arch.7 \
ascii.7 \
+ bikeshed.7 \
bsd.snmpmod.mk.7 \
build.7 \
c.7 \
Index: share/man/man7/bikeshed.7
===================================================================
--- /dev/null
+++ share/man/man7/bikeshed.7
@@ -0,0 +1,238 @@
+.\"
+.\"----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+.\""THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
+.\"XXX wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
+.\"can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
+.\"this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. -XXX
+.\"----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+.\"
+.Dd April 1, 2022
+.Dt BIKESHED 7
+.Os
+.Sh NAME
+.Nm bikeshed
+.Nd any colour will do
+.Sh DESCRIPTION
+.Bl -column
+.It Subject: A bike shed (any colour will do) on greener grass...
+.It From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@freebsd.org>
+.It Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 16:14:10 +0200
+.It Message-ID: <18238.938873650@critter.freebsd.dk>
+.It Sender: phk@critter.freebsd.dk
+.It Bcc: Blind Distribution List: ;
+.It MIME-Version: 1.0
+.El
+.Pp
+[bcc'ed to committers, hackers]
+.Pp
+My last pamphlet was sufficiently well received that I was not
+scared away from sending another one, and today I have the time
+and inclination to do so.
+.Pp
+I've had a little trouble with deciding on the right distribution
+of this kind of stuff, this time it is bcc'ed to committers and
+hackers, that is probably the best I can do.
+I'm not subscribed to hackers myself but more on that later.
+.Pp
+The thing which have triggered me this time is the "sleep(1) should
+do fractional seconds" thread, which have pestered our lives for
+many days now, it's probably already a couple of weeks, I can't
+even be bothered to check.
+.Pp
+To those of you who have missed this particular thread: Congratulations.
+.Pp
+It was a proposal to make sleep(1) DTRT if given a non-integer
+argument that set this particular grass-fire off.
+I'm not going to say anymore about it than that, because it is a much
+smaller item than one would expect from the length of the thread, and it
+has already received far more attention than some of the *problems*
+we have around here.
+.Pp
+The sleep(1) saga is the most blatant example of a bike shed
+discussion we have had ever in
+.Fx .
+The proposal was well thought out, we would gain compatibility with
+.Ox
+and
+.Nx ,
+and still be fully compatible with any code anyone
+ever wrote.
+.Pp
+Yet so many objections, proposals and changes were raised and
+launched that one would think the change would have plugged all
+the holes in swiss cheese or changed the taste of Coca Cola or
+something similar serious.
+.Pp
+"What is it about this bike shed?" Some of you have asked me.
+.Pp
+It's a long story, or rather it's an old story, but it is quite
+short actually.
+C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a book in the early 1960'ies, called
+"Parkinson's Law", which contains a lot of insight into the dynamics of
+management.
+.Pp
+You can find it on Amazon, and maybe also in your dads book-shelf,
+it is well worth its price and the time to read it either way,
+if you like Dilbert, you'll like Parkinson.
+.Pp
+Somebody recently told me that he had read it and found that only
+about 50% of it applied these days.
+That is pretty darn good I would say, many of the modern management
+books have hit-rates a lot lower than that, and this one is 35+ years
+old.
+.Pp
+In the specific example involving the bike shed, the other vital
+component is an atomic power-plant, I guess that illustrates the
+age of the book.
+.Pp
+Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and
+get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar
+atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will
+be tangled up in endless discussions.
+.Pp
+Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast,
+so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and
+rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody
+else checked all the details before it got this far.
+Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the
+point, examples relating to Los Alamos in his books.
+.Pp
+A bike shed on the other hand.
+Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to
+watch the game on TV.
+So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with
+your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is
+doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is *here*.
+.Pp
+In Denmark we call it "setting your fingerprint".
+It is about personal pride and prestige, it is about being able to point
+somewhere and say "There! *I* did that."
+It is a strong trait in politicians, but present in most people given
+the chance.
+Just think about footsteps in wet cement.
+.Pp
+I bow my head in respect to the original proposer because he stuck
+to his guns through this carpet blanking from the peanut gallery,
+and the change is in our tree today.
+I would have turned my back and walked away after less than a handful
+of messages in that thread.
+.Pp
+And that brings me, as I promised earlier, to why I am not subscribed
+to -hackers:
+.Pp
+I un-subscribed from -hackers several years ago, because I could
+not keep up with the email load.
+Since then I have dropped off several other lists as well for the very
+same reason.
+.Pp
+And I still get a lot of email.
+A lot of it gets routed to /dev/null by filters: People like Brett
+Glass will never make it onto my screen, commits to documents in
+languages I don't understand likewise, commits to ports as such.
+All these things and more go the winter way without me ever even knowing
+about it.
+.Pp
+But despite these sharp teeth under my mailbox I still get too much
+email.
+.Pp
+This is where the greener grass comes into the picture:
+.Pp
+I wish we could reduce the amount of noise in our lists and I wish
+we could let people build a bike shed every so often, and I don't
+really care what colour they paint it.
+.Pp
+The first of these wishes is about being civil, sensitive and
+intelligent in our use of email.
+.Pp
+If I could concisely and precisely define a set of criteria for
+when one should and when one should not reply to an email so that
+everybody would agree and abide by it, I would be a happy man, but
+I am too wise to even attempt that.
+.Pp
+But let me suggest a few pop-up windows I would like to see
+mail-programs implement whenever people send or reply to email
+to the lists they want me to subscribe to:
+.Pp
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+ | Your email is about to be sent to several hundred thousand |
+ | people, who will have to spend at least 10 seconds reading |
+ | it before they can decide if it is interesting. At least |
+ | two man-weeks will be spent reading your email. Many of |
+ | the recipients will have to pay to download your email. |
+ | |
+ | Are you absolutely sure that your email is of sufficient |
+ | importance to bother all these people? |
+ | |
+ | [YES] [REVISE] [CANCEL] |
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+.Pp
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+ | Warning: You have not read all emails in this thread yet. |
+ | Somebody else may already have said what you are about to |
+ | say in your reply. Please read the entire thread before |
+ | replying to any email in it. |
+ | |
+ | [CANCEL] |
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+.Pp
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+ | Warning: Your mail program have not even shown you the |
+ | entire message yet. Logically it follows that you cannot |
+ | possibly have read it all and understood it. |
+ | |
+ | It is not polite to reply to an email until you have |
+ | read it all and thought about it. |
+ | |
+ | A cool off timer for this thread will prevent you from |
+ | replying to any email in this thread for the next one hour |
+ | |
+ | [Cancel] |
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+.Pp
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+ | You composed this email at a rate of more than N.NN cps |
+ | It is generally not possible to think and type at a rate |
+ | faster than A.AA cps, and therefore you reply is likely to |
+ | incoherent, badly thought out and/or emotional. |
+ | |
+ | A cool off timer will prevent you from sending any email |
+ | for the next one hour. |
+ | |
+ | [Cancel] |
+ +------------------------------------------------------------+
+.Pp
+The second part of my wish is more emotional.
+Obviously, the capacities we had manning the unfriendly fire in the
+sleep(1) thread, despite their many years with the project, never cared
+enough to do this tiny deed, so why are they suddenly so enflamed
+by somebody else so much their junior doing it?
+.Pp
+I wish I knew.
+.Pp
+I do know that reasoning will have no power to stop such "reactionaire
+conservatism".
+It may be that these people are frustrated about their own lack of
+tangible contribution lately or it may be a bad case of "we're old and
+grumpy, WE know how youth should behave".
+.Pp
+Either way it is very unproductive for the project, but I have no
+suggestions for how to stop it.
+The best I can suggest is to refrain from fuelling the monsters that
+lurk in the mailing lists: Ignore them, don't answer them, forget
+they're there.
+.Pp
+I hope we can get a stronger and broader base of contributors in
+.Fx ,
+and I hope we together can prevent the grumpy old men
+and the Brett Glasses of the world from chewing them up, spitting
+them out and scaring them away before they ever get a leg to the
+ground.
+.Pp
+For the people who have been lurking out there, scared away from
+participating by the gargoyles: I can only apologise and encourage
+you to try anyway, this is not the way I want the environment in
+the project to be.
+.Pp
+Poul-Henning
+.Sh SEE ALSO
+.Xr sleep 1

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