Where is FreeBSD going?

Brad Knowles brad.knowles at skynet.be
Tue Jan 6 11:33:17 PST 2004


At 5:35 PM +0000 2004/01/06, Paul Robinson wrote:

>  The cleverness of the "troll" was:
>
>  1. It was written by somebody who at the least had read these lists
>  for at least the last two years

	Maybe.  It would be easy enough to skim the archives.

>  2. It aired the real frustrations of those of us without commit bits

	Define "us".  You sure as hell aren't speaking for me.

>  3. It was on the whole, apart from the personal attacks, reasonably
>  correct.

	Evidence, please.

>  And therein lies a problem. The only thing any of the committers
>  cares about is what they think. Got a problem? Submit a patch.
>  Don't like the way things are done? Submit a patch. Don't like
>  how such-and-such a util works? Submit a patch.

	Not at all true.  Mark Murray (among others) has stressed the 
need for people with different talents to contribute to the project. 
We need more people who can help us do proper QA.  We need more 
people who can help us write good documentation.  We need people who 
have a lot of skills that are not necessarily related at all to 
writing code.

	If you have a set of skills that you think could be useful, 
please contact Mark or one of the other members of -core to find out 
how you might be able to contribute to the project.


	Otherwise, if you're not willing to try to put your money where 
your mouth is, then please shut up.

>  Except, when Matt Dillon did submit, he was told to back out
>  his changes and then lost his commit bit. This was because
>  there was an "imminent commit" due from somebody working on
>  SMP, which still isn't finished really.

	I have the greatest respect for Matt, but he has been a serious 
problem for the project for a long time.  His technical disagreements 
with other members of the project are just one relatively minor 
aspect of those problems.  His personality has been a much bigger 
issue.

>  In short, you can put all the effort you want in, but -core and
>  many with a commit bit will resent you for it, because you're
>  just a user. Who cares about users? This is their project after
>  all.

	If you want to feel like this is your project, then you need to 
find a way to take ownership of some part.  See above.

>  Personally, unless the madness around SMP, the 5- branch and various
>  other bits are ironed out, I can see my next server deployment making
>  use of DragonFly.

	Please let us know how it turns out.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

GCS/IT d+(-) s:+(++)>: a C++(+++)$ UMBSHI++++$ P+>++ L+ !E-(---) W+++(--) N+
!w--- O- M++ V PS++(+++) PE- Y+(++) PGP>+++ t+(+++) 5++(+++) X++(+++) R+(+++)
tv+(+++) b+(++++) DI+(++++) D+(++) G+(++++) e++>++++ h--- r---(+++)* z(+++)


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