FreeLists / openbeos / [openbeos] sign me up

[John Gabriele <john_m_gabriele@xxxxxxxxx>]

I meant to send this to the whole list but accidentally
only sent it to Daniel (sorry for the duplication Dan).

--- Daniel Reinhold <danielr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> [snip] 
> John, I hope you decide to join in.
> [snip]

You got it. I'm in. :)

I won't have much to contribute immediately. Here's
my situation:

My only computer is a Sun Blade 100 w/ Solaris 8. (After
things went south with BeInc, I packed up my dual PII and
sent it to my Dad for his first computer.) I spent the last
8 months or so learning (and getting the SCPJ2 cert in) Java.
Now I'm finally realizing that the thing that really gets me
most excited about programming is operating systems. I'm so
happy to see the OpenBeOS project happening.

I've got to refresh what I knew about c++. Heck, I've still got
to download and install gcc3 and whatever other system packages
it requires. Yes, I know, I'll need some other pc hardware...

    Say, what are the specs for the target platform that OpenBeOS
    will be shooting for first? If I knew that, I could start
    gathering up some hardware for the new dev system. Boy, I
    wish PowerPC mobos were as common as the Intel stuff...

I still don't know how to use CVS, so that's another small project.

I suspect my current employment will be coming to an end soon
(impending company layoff's) so there'll be a lot of programming
time spent job-hunting. ~:|

Just yesterday I picked up the dinosaur book (I didn't go to school
for CS so I never took an OS class). Sixth edition. Sweet. So there's
a bunch of reading time there.

Anyhow, here's how I'd like to start contributing: I think there's
a lot of amateurs like me who'd like to get up to speed on the project
but need a good long FAQ to get them going. I see we've already got
one on http://open-beos.sourceforge.net/ but I expect it should get
much larger and more comprehensive as the project goes on.

I'd like to be the OpenBeOS FAQ maintainer.
The way I figure it, I can keep a simple html source file, and
an email addy (something like OpenBeOS_FAQ@xxxxxxxxx) and work
as a centralized location for folks to submit question/answer
combo's to. I'm particularly good at putting things into plain
english and hounding submitters into making their explanations
more clear. Then, once a month or so, I can forward Daniel the
updated FAQ to get up on the web page.

Is this something that sounds useful? Would you suggest my time is
better spent building up some chops so I can help more on the coding
side sooner?

---j


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