Website CMS Question

[Kevin Kinsey]

executive at ausvision.com wrote:

> Hi Guys - just wondered what CMS you are using for www.freebsd.org .
> Think the site looks great. Cheers!
>
> Kindest Regards
>
> Nathan Wilkinson
> Ausvision: Australian Digital Media


Sorry if this one's too cold to reply to; I notice no replies
to what seems an honest question, and if the O.P. doesn't
mind, I'll try and answer it.

The site doesn't use a "CMS" exactly;  it's actually
maintained by tiny naked elves who come out at
night, read the entire WWW for news, search the
CVS repo for new things to document, and all
have either a CS or marketing degree from the
University of California.  If you'd like to make a
donation, some of our more conservative users
are collecting funds to buy them clothing.  :D

More seriously, if you know much about Unix-like
systems and so-forth: much (or all?) of the site is in
SGML format and is 'automagically' rebuilt nightly
by "make", using custom Makefiles.  The code and
content are maintained by the "FreeBSD Documentation
Project" (FDP) as part of the "doc tree" which is a large
part of the entire FreeBSD codebase.  You can reach
the FDP at doc at freebsd.org; I believe that
www at freebsd.org is a more specific list for all
things website related.

If you don't know much about such things, we'll
just call it a "proprietary solution," but that is
really quite a misnomer, as all the tools are free,
and the code and its documentation are under a
very liberal (but non-GNU*) license, as one might
expect from "FreeBSD".

Finally, as regards its appearance: it recently
had a face lift courtesy of Emily Boyd and the
Google "Summer of Code".  AFAIK, this is simply
the "index" page and several other key pages ...
much of the site (mail archives, user documentation,
etc) still looks as it always did.  The user community
is divided over a few issues regarding this "lift", some
technical, some personal and some sentimental, but
it "is what it is" .... and that's 'nuff said on that subject,
lest I begin another discussion of "what color the bikeshed
ought to be".

Lastly, I will make mention that FreeBSD is an excellent
operating system for use in almost any server and many
desktop applications.  Feel free to ask any questions
you like about FreeBSD; perhaps it can help your organization
as it's helped others like Yahoo! and New York Internet....

Kevin Kinsey
FreeBSD User


*There are some GNU tools in FreeBSD that use
the GNU GPL, but most of FreeBSD is "BSD licensed",
and has been for decades....

-- 
	WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:

Firings will continue until morale improves.