HEADS UP! KSE needs more attention

[Wes Peters]

On Sunday 06 June 2004 16:49, Scott Long wrote:
> Garance A Drosihn wrote:
> > At 3:46 PM -0600 6/6/04, Scott Long wrote:
> >> At this point, I'm going to advocate that Alpha be dropped from
> >> Tier-1 status for 5.3 and 5-STABLE and no longer be a blocking
> >> item for releases.  ... As I said back then, demotion is not a
> >> terminal condition, and I would be thrilled if someone comes
> >> forward in the future and brings the platform back up to date.
> >
> > I think you have to officially demote it, with emphasis on the
> > point that "demotion is not a terminal condition".  Then, if some
> > developer(s) show up and implement all the missing pieces, we
> > can happily announce it back in tier 1.
> >
> > But for now, say that it *IS* demoted.  Not that you're advocating
> > that we think about maybe demoting it in the future unless someone
> > offers to start looking into the missing pieces.
> >
> > At the moment, it probably also makes sense to demote sparc64,
> > even though I own one of those.  Not that we have anything against
> > it, but as a practical matter we haven't hit "critical mass" on it
> > just yet.  Since I am interested in sparc64, I can take that as a
> > goal to help make it a tier-1 platform by 5.4-release...
>
> Ok, thanks for all of the input.  I'm going to wait a few more days for
> anyone else to chime in and then discuss it with re@ and core at .  We'll
> likely have a formal announcement in a week.
>
> Back to the topic at hand, who is looking that the other KSE issues?

The "tierness" of a particular platform wasn't all that important as long as 
FreeBSD 5 remained a development branch, but with 5-STABLE rapidly 
approaching, it will become much more important.

When we first documented the tier approach, we selected sparc64 as the 
reference 64-bit platform, because it was at that time the most viable and 
the most actively developed platform.  This was shortly before the Athlon64 
release, which has turned into an avalanche.

None of the current tiers are set in stone, in fact, they're not really very 
firm at all.  The stability and completeness of each will have to be 
evaluated as the 5.3 release becomes real and adjustments made.  It 
wouldn't surprise me to see a new 64-bit reference platform chosen; the 
momentum in that arena has definitely shifted.

As an aside, I would sadden me greatly to see sparc64 or alpha abandoned. 
Even sadder (to me) is how little I've been able to contribute to either.  
I don't have time to bring my sparc skills up to working on FreeBSD 
internals and I'm not likely to suddenly grow more time soon.  I do have an 
Ultra 5 workstation that is free to any developer in North America who will 
use it to further FreeBSD development.  I'll contact dlo@ with details.

sparc64 and alpha need a few champions.  Without them, these ports will 
quickly be relegated to the bit-bucket.  At any rate, FreeBSD will continue 
to move, in a direction we've decided to call "forward."

-- 

        Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?

Wes Peters                                               wes at softweyr.com