Removing documentation

[Michelle Sullivan]

John Marino wrote:
> On 2/15/2016 5:59 PM, Roger Marquis wrote:
>   
>> It was actually worse than that.  Those of us who questioned the wisdom
>> of such disruptive and backwards-incompatible changes being implemented
>> mid-release instead of at a release boundry were A) ignored, B) told that
>> there were not enough (developer) resources, and C) even the announcement
>> was unprofessional and lacked justification for the rush job:
>>     
>
> This makes no sense.  Ports are not tied to base releases.
> And you think lack of developer resources is an invalid reason?
>   

Actually it made perfect sense... (for a change) ... make pkgng the
default on 10.x and allow people to use either on 8.4 and 9.x ...  this
made perfect sense...  Make base packaging using similar/same tools as
part of 11+ makes perfect sense... 


....No, though... arbitrary date set, f**k real users, f**k whether it
works or not, because we need people to put it in production so we can
test our buggy software...

>
>   
>>   There comes a time in the life cycle of just about every software
>>   package that it has bee re-evaluated, refreshed, deprecated or just
>>   retired.
>>
>>   It is time that we bid farewell to the old pkg_* software that has been
>>   part of FreeBSD since the beginning, and has served us well.  After
>>   years of development, testing, and playing, pkg(8) has become a
>>   suitable replacement.
>>
>> "there comes a time"?  "time that we bid farewell"?  These are not
>> suitable criteria IMO for dropping support of mission-critical
>> subsystems.  The FreeBSD Foundation SHOULD have played a part in insuring
>> a smoother transition to pkgng (much less portsng and, gack, rcng) but
>> this doesn't seem to have been on their radar.
>>     
>
> You know good and well that people kick the can down the road FOREVER.
> You could have announced it 3 years ahead and people would still scream
> NOT YET!  NOT YET!  This would NEVER happen in Linux!
>
> It doesn't matter where you draw the line, you will never get everyone
> to respect it.  It's never enough time.
>   

Line drawn - at the next major version...  that's an easy win... people
can complain, but they can't argue that it isn't a good decision because
they can choose... upgrade/don't upgrade... we didn't get the chance to
choose ... it was forced down peoples necks... working or not. 
Fortunately I was able to get the old system working again... and in
fact keep it up to date until about 3 months ago... (and only stopped
there because I have other things to do - will go back to it again later.)

>>> From my perspective as an advocate and long-time user (since 2.0.5) this
>>>       
>> marked a low-point in the viability of FreeBSD vis-a-vis other FOSS
>> distributions.  Thankfully, going forward from FreeBSD 11 the release
>> cycle has been lengthened and base is going to be packaged.  Those of use
>> who support large numbers of dev and production systems can at least
>> expect that future upgrades won't be as time-consuming or, hopefully, as
>> buggy.
>>     
>
> "large numbers of dev and production systems" (push to memory stack)
>
>
>
>   
>> I believe this is factually incorrect.  We were aware but the decisions
>> were being made by core developers who were not, apparently, interested
>> in our concerns or the expected fallout.
>>     
>
> So you chose to ignore the deadlines in the hopes the pleading would
> work?  You intentionally did not prepare against the published timetable?
>   

Well I didn't know - despite following the conversations on the public
lists - until 3 weeks before the event that the change was going to
deliberately and irrevocably break the old systems... again...

>
>   
>>> There was always the option of freezing the tree and pulling in the
>>> security updates manually until you were ready to migrate to pkg(8) too.
>>>       
>> Sure, if you can afford to pay a full-time core dev there's the option of
>> backporting but even this was made impractical by the simultaneous
>> deprecation of the pre-ng ports tree, make version and pkg format.
>>     
>
> No, it's not fully time.  You just said "large numbers of dev and
> production systems", so I am pretty confident the business case would
> have been there for this.
>
> It's a business, right?  You aren't talking about a shoestring hobby.
>   

Dunno about Roger, but I am and I had been campaigning internally about
getting support for FreeBSD as a platform and support for the foundation
in the way of devs and/or cash...  that is *never* going to happen now. 
Money has been allocated and sent to Redhat (nothing to do with me, but
the pkgng debacle left me without legs to argue the case, so the
decision makers stuffed that.)

>> There are lots of reasons why Linux has effectively eclipsed BSD
>> including device drivers, unattended deployments and install menus but
>> 8.X's wholesale throwing of so many of us under the bus was by far the
>> worst.
>>     
>
> And now the fully circle.  This is FreeBSD's Godwin's law.  You know the
> discussion is over when somebody says that "[issue] of the day" is the
> root cause of BSD being eclipsed by Linux.  Since I've heard [issue]
> replaced about 200 times, I'm kind of doubting it.  I guess it's purpose
> is to make everyone involved with "[issue]" to feel personally
> responsible and oh what could have been if you hadn't of made the wrong
> decision....
>   

That I can't (and won't) comment on, but I will tell you that's the
reason all new servers I manage are being installed with CentOS+paid
support contract and not FreeBSD+donation.  The bed was made by people,
they can sleep in it.

Michelle

-- 
Michelle Sullivan
http://www.mhix.org/